DUKE 

UNIVERSITY 

LIBRARY 


-caiiEaiaN 


r  ' 

Always  a  crusading  reformer, 
Upton  Sinclair  has  written 
many  novels  that  are  widely  read, 
(The  Lanny  Budd  novels  are  parti¬ 
cularly  popular  in  Latin  America. 
In  The  Junp-le.  a  "muck-raking" 
expose  of  conditions  in  the 
meat-packing  industry  in  1905, 
Sinclair  achieved  his  greatesti 
success  with  American  readers,/ 
But  he  was  disappointed  in  the 
reaction  of  the  public  because, 
as  he  said,  he  had  aimed  at  the 
nation’s  heart  and  only  hit  it  in 
the  stomach.  His  hit  was  so 
powerful  that  it  prompted  the 
investigations  leading  to  the 
Pure  Pood  laws  of  1906,  See  The 
Oxford  Companion  to  American 
Literature. 

hrh 

Sinclair,  The  Jungle. 


Jiithe  ?Hnibersit|>  ILibrarp 
JMnbergrabuatt  Collection 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2017  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/jungle01sinc 


THE  JUNGLE 

M 


BY 

UPTON  SINCLAIR 


Published  by 


UPTON  SINCLAIR 
1935 


CoPTHIGHT,  1905,  1906,  BY 
UPTON  SINCLAIR. 


Copyright,  1920,  by  UPTON  SINCLAIR. 


Published  February,  1906. 


All  rights  reserved, 

including  that  of  translation  into  foreign  languages, 
including  the  Scandinavian. 


279 


Slo  I U 
1^20 


TO  THE  WORKINGMEN  OF  AMERICA 


) 


,  V 

tv  • 


I  ^  ■■ . 

•  s  . 


V 


■) 


I 


\ 


THE  JUNGLE 


CHAPTER  I 

It  was  four  o’clock  when  the  ceremony  was  over  and 
the  carriages  began  to  arrive.  There  had  been  a  crowd 
following  all  the  way,  owing  to  the  exuberance  ot  Marija 
Berczynskas.  The  occasion  rested  heavily  upon  Marija’s 
broad  shoulders — it  was  her  task  to  see  that  all  things 
went  in  due  form,  and  after  the  best  home  traditions;  and, 
flying  wildly  hither  and  thither,  bowling  every  one  out  of 
the  way,  and  scolding  and  exhorting  all  day  with  her  tre¬ 
mendous  voice,  Marija  was  too  eager  to  see  that  others 
conformed  to  the  proprieties  to  consider  them  herself. 
She  had  left  the  church  last  of  all,  and,  desiring  to  arrive 
first  at  the  hali,  had  issued  orders  to  the  coachman  to 
drive  faster.  When  that  personage  had  developed  a  will 
of  his  own  in  the  matter,  Marija  had  flung  up  the  window 
of  the  carriage,  and{  leaning  out,  proceeded  to  tell  him 
her  opinion  of  him,  first  in  Lithuanian,  which  he  did  not 
understand,  and  then  in  Polish,  which  he  did.  Having 
the  advantage  of  her  in  altitude,  the  driver  had  stood  his 
ground  and  even  ventured  to  attempt  to  speak  ;  and  the 
result  had  been  a  furious  altercation,  which,  continuing 
all  the  way  down  Ashland  Avenue,  had  added  a  new  swarm 
of  urchins  to  the  cortege  at  each  side  street  for  half  a 
mile. 

This  was  unfortunate,  for  already  there  was  a  throng 
before  the  door.  The  music  had  started  up,  and  half  a 
block  away  you  could  hear  the  dull  “broom,  broom”  of  a 
’cello,  with  the  squeaking  of  two  fiddles  which  vied  with 
each  other  in  intricate  and  altitudinous  gymnastics.  See- 

1 


2 


THE  JUNGLE 


lag  tHe  throng,  Marija  abandoned  precipitately  the  debate 
ooncerning  the  ancestors  of  her  coachman,  and  springing 
from  the  moving  carriage,  plunged  in  and  proceeded  to 
clear  a  way  to  the  hall.  Once  within,  she  turned  and 
began  to  push  the  other  way,  roaring,  meantime,  “  Eik  i 
EikI  Uzdaryk-duris  /”  in  tones  which  made  the  orchestral 
uproar  sound  like  fairy  music. 

“  Z.  Graiezunas,  Pasilinksminimams  darzas.  Vynas. 
Sznapsas.  Wines  and  Liquors.  Union  Headquarters” — 
that  was  the  way  the  signs  ran.  The  reader,  who  per¬ 
haps  has  never  held  much  converse  in  the  language  of 
far-o£f  Lithuania,  will  be  glad  of  the  explanation  that  the 
place  was  the  rear-room  of  a  saloon  in  that  part  of  Chi¬ 
cago  known  as  “  back  of  the  yards.”  This  information  is 
definite  and  suited  to  the  matter  of  fact ;  but  how  piti¬ 
fully  inadequate  it  would  have  seemed  to  one  who  under¬ 
stood  that  it  was  also  the  supreme  hour  of  ecstasy  in  the 
life  of  one  of  God’s  gentlest  creatures,  the  scene  of  the 
wedding-feast  and  the  joy-transfiguration  of  little  Ona 
Lukoszaite.! 

She  stood  in  the  doorway,  shepherded  by  Cousin  Marija, 
breathless  from  pushing  through  the  crowd,  and  in  her 
happiness  painful  to  look  upon.  There  was  a  light  of 
wonder  in  her  eyes  and  her  lids  trembled,  and  her  other¬ 
wise  wan  little  face  was  flushed.  She  wore  a  muslin 
C.i'ess,  conspicuously  white,  and  a  stiff  little  veil  coming  to 
her  shoulders.  There  were  five  pink  paper-roses  twisted 
in  the  veil,  aud  eleven  bright  green  rose-leaves.  There 
were  new  white  cotton  gloves  upon  her  hands,  and  as  she 
stood  staring  about  her  she  twisted  them  together  fever¬ 
ishly.  It  was  almost  too  much  for  her — you  could  see 
the  pain  of  too  great  emotion  in  her  face,  and  all  the 
tremor  of  her  form.  She  was  so  young — not  quite  six¬ 
teen —  and  small  for  her  age,  a  mere  child  ;  and  she  had 
just  been  married — and  married  to  Jurgis,^  of  all  men,  to 
Jurgis  Rudkus,  he  with  the  white  flower  in  the  button¬ 
hole  of  his  new  black  suit,  he  with  the  mighty  shoulders 
aud  the  giant  hands. 

'Pronounced  YoorgMs. 


THE  JUNGLE 


3 


Ona  was  blue-eyed  and  fair,  wliile  Jurgig  had  great 
black  eyes  with  beetling  brows,  and  thick  black  hair  that 
curled  in  waves  about  his  ears — in  short,  they  were  one 
of  those  incongruous  and  impossible  married  couples  with 
which  Mother  Nature  so  often  wills  to  confound  all  proph¬ 
ets,  before  and  after.  J  urgis  could  take  up  a  two-hundred- 
and-fifty-pound  quarter  of  beef  and  carry  it  into  a  car 
without  a  stagger,  or  even  a  thought ;  and  now  he  stood 
in  a  far  corner,  frightened  as  a  hunted  animal,  and  obliged 
to  moisten  his  lips  with  his  tongue  each  time  before  he 
could  answer  the  congratulations  of  his  friends. 

Gradually  there  was  eflected  a  separation  between  the 
spectators  and  the  guests — a  separation  at  least  suffi¬ 
ciently  complete  for  working  purposes.  There  was  no 
time  during  the  festivities  which  ensued  when  there  were 
not  groups  of  onlookers  in  the  doorways  and  the  corners ; 
and  if  any  one  of  these  onlookers  came  sufficiently  close, 
or  looked  sufficiently  hungry,  a  chair  was  offered  him,  and 
he  was  invited  to  the  feast.  It  was  one  of  the  laws  of 
the  veselija  that  no  one  goes  hungry ;  and,  while  a  rule 
made  in  the  forests  of  Lithuania  is  hard  to  apply  in  the 
stock-yards  district  of  Chicago,  with  its  quarter  of  a  mill¬ 
ion  inhabitants,  still  they  did  their  best,  and  the  children 
who  ran  in  from  the  street,  and  even  the  dogs,  went  out 
again  happier.  A  charming  informality  was  one  of  the 
characteristics  of  this  celebration.  The  men  wore  their 
hats,  or,  if  they  wished,  they  took  them  off,  and  their  coats 
with  them ;  they  ate  when  and  where  they  pleased,  and 
moved  as  often  as  they  pleased.  There  were  to  be  speeches 
and  singing,  but  no  one  had  to  listen  who  did  not  care  to ; 
if  he  wished,  meantime,  to  speak  or  sing  himself,  he  was 
perfectly  free.  The  resulting  medley  of  sound  distracted 
no  one,  save  possibly  alone  the  babies,  of  which  there  were 
present  a  number  equal  to  the  total  possessed  by  all  the 
guests  invited.  There  was  no  other  place  for  the  babies  to 
be,  and  so  part  of  the  preparations  for  the  evening  consisted 
of  a  collection  of  cribs  and  carriages  in  one  corner.  In 
these  the  babies  slept,  three  or  four  together,  or  wakened 
together,  as  the  case  might  be.  Those  who  were  still 


4 


THE  JUNGLE 


older,  and  could  reach  the  tables,  inarched  about  munch* 
ing  contentedly  at  meat- bones  and  bologna  sausages. 

The  room  is  about  thirty  feet  square,  with  whitewashed 
walls,  bare  save  for  a  calendar,  a  picture  of  a  race-horse, 
and  a  family  tree  in  a  gilded  frame.  To  the  right  there 
is  a  door  from  ihe  saloon,  with  a  few  loafers  in  the  door¬ 
way,  and  in  the  corner  beyond  it  a  bar,  with  a  presiding 
genius  clad  in  soiled  white,  with  waxed  black  mustaches 
and  a  carefully  oiled  curl  plastered  against  one  side  of  his 
forehead.  In  the  opposite  corner  are  two  tables,  filling  a 
third  of  the  room  and  laden  with  dishes  and  cold  viands, 
which  a  few  of  the  hungrier  guests  are  already  munching. 
At  the  head,  where  sits  the  bride,  is  a  snow-white  cake, 
with  an  Eiffel  tower  of  constructed  decoration,  with  sugar 
roses  and  two  angels  upon  it,  and  a  generous  sprinkling 
of  pink  and  green  and  yellow  candies.  Beyond  opens  a 
door  into  the  kitchen,  where  there  is  a  glimpse  to  be  had 
of  a  range  with  much  steam  ascending  from  it,  and  many 
women,  old  and  young,  rushing  hither  and  thither.  In 
the  corner  to  the  left  are  the  three  musicians,  upon  a  little 
platform,  toiling  heroically  to  make  some  impression  upon 
the  hubbub;  also  the  babies,  similarly  occupied,  and  an 
open  window  whence  the  populace  imbibes  the  sights  and 
sounds  and  odors. 

Suddenly  some  of  the  steam  begins  to  advance,  and, 
peering  through  it,  you  discern  Aunt  Elizabeth,  Ona’s 
step-mother — Teta  Elzbieta,  as  they  call  her — bearing 
aloft  a  great  platter  of  stewed  duck.  Behind  her  is  Ko- 
trina,  making  her  way  cautiously,  staggering  beneath  a 
similar  burden ;  and  half  a  minute  later  there  appears 
'old  Grandmother  Majauszkiene,  with  a  big  yellow  bowl 
of  smoking  potatoes,  nearly  as  big  as  herself.  So,  bit  by 
bit,  the  feast  takes  form — there  is  a  ham  and  a  dish  of 
sauerkraut,  boiled  rice,  macaroni,  bologna  sausages,  great 
piles  of  penny  buns,  bowls  of  milk,  and  foaming  pitchers 
of  beer.  There  is  also,  not  six  feet  from  your  back,  the 
bar,  where  you  may  order  all  you  please  and  do  not  have 
to  pay  for  it,  “  Eiksz  I  Graicziau  /”  screams  Marija  Ber- 


THE  JUNGLE 


5 


czynskas, am  falls  to  work  herself — for  there  is  more  upon 
the  stove  iiside  that  will  be  spoiled  if  it  be  not  eaten. 

So,  witnlaughter  and  shouts  and  endless  badinage  and 
merrimeny,  the  guests  take  their  places.  The  young  men, 
who  for  the  most  part  have  been  huddled  near  the  door, 
summon  their  resolution  and  advance;  and  the  shrinking 
Jurgis  is  poked  and  scolded  by  the  old  folks  until  he  con¬ 
sents  to  seat  himself  at  the  right  hand  of  the  bride.  The 
two  bridesmaids, whose  insignia  of  office  are  paper  wreaths, 
come  next,  and  after  them  the  rest  of  the  guests,  old  and 
young,  boys  and  girls.  The  spirit  of  the  occasion  takes 
hold  of  the  stately  bartender,  who  condescends  to  a  plate 
of  stewed  duck  ;  even  the  fat  policeman — whose  duty  it 
will  be,  later  in  the  evening,  to  break  up  the  fights — 
draws  up  a  chair  to  the  foot  of  tbe  teble.  And  the  chil- 
dresn  shout  and  the  babies  yell,  and  everyone  laughs  and 
sings  and  chatters — while  above  all  the  deafening  clamor 
Ccjusin  Marija  shouts  orders  to  the  musicians. 

The  musicians — how  shall  one  begin  to  describe  them? 
A|ll  this  time  they  have  been  there,  playing  in  a  mad 
fi-enzy — all  of  this  scene  must  be  read,  or  said,  or  sung, 
t'Aj  music.  It  is  the  music  which  makes  it  what  it  is ;  it 
i;S  the  music  which  changes  the  place  from  the  rear-room 
olf  a  saloon  in  back  of  the  yards  to  a  fairy  place,  a  won- 
d'.erland,  a  little  corner  of  the  high  mansions  of  the  sky. 

The  little  person  who  lea  '  'this  trio  is  an  inspired  man. 
’  His  fiddle  is  out  of  tune,  and  there  is  no  rosin  on  his  bow, 
but  still  he  is  an  inspired  man — the  hands  of  the  muses 
have  been  laid  upon  him.  He  plays  like  one  possessed  by 
a  demon,  by  a  whole  horde  of  demons.  x  ou  can  feel 
them  in  the  air  round  about  him,  capering  frenetically; 
with  their  invisible  feet  they  set  the  pace,  and  the  hair 
of  the  leader  of  the  orchestra  rises  on  end,  and  his  eye¬ 
balls  start  from  their  sockets,  as  he  toils  to  keep  up  with 
them 

Tamoszius  Kuszleika  is  his  name,  and  he  has  taught 
himself  to  play  the  violin  by  practising  all  night,  after 
working  all  day  on  the  “killing  beds.”  He  is  in  his  shirt¬ 
sleeves,  with  a  vest  figured  with  faded  gold  horseshoes, 


6 


THE  JITNGLE 


and  a  pink-stnped  shirt,  suggestive  of  peppeunint  candy. 
A  pair  of  military  trousers,  light  blue  with  a  ysllow  stripe, 
«erve  to  give  that  suggestion  of  authority  proper  to  the 
leader  of  a  band.  He  is  only  about  five  feet  high,  but 
even  so  these  trousers  are  about  eight  inches  short  of  the 
ground.  You  wonder  where  he  can  have  gotten  them  — 
or  rather  you  would  wonder,  if  the  excitement  of  being  in 
his  presence  left  you  time  to  think  of  such  things. 

For  he  is  an  inspired  man.  Every  inch  of  him  is  in¬ 
spired —  you  might  almost  say  inspired  separately.  He 
9tamps  with  his  feet,  he  tosses  his  head,  he  sways  and 
swings  to  and  fro ;  he  has  a  wizened -up  little  face,  irre- 
(sistibly  comical ;  and,  when  he  executes  a  turn  or  a  flour¬ 
ish,  his  brows  knit  and  his  lips  work  and  his  eyelids  wink 
—  the  very  ends  of  his  necktie  bristle  out.  And  e\'^ery 
now  and  then  he  turns  upon  his  companions,  nodding.  Sig¬ 
nalling,  beckoning  frantically  —  with  every  inch  of  him 
appealing,  imploring,  in  behalf  of  the  muses  and  the-ir 
call.  1 

For  they  are  hardly  worthy  of  Tamoszius,  the  other  tr^'O 
members  of  the  orchestra.  The  second  \dolin  is  a  Slovalc, 
a  tall,  gaunt  man  with  black-rimmed  spectacles  and  thve 
mute  and  patient  look  of  an  overdriven  mule ;  he  respondfs 
to  the  whip  but  feebly,  and  then  always  falls  back  into  hiis 
old  rut.  The  third  man  is  very  fat,  with  a  round,  red , 
sentimental  nose,  and  he  plays  with  his  ej’^es  turned  up  to? 
the  sky  and  a  look  of  infinite  jreaming.  He  is  playing  an 
bass  part  upon  his  ’cello,  and  so  the  excitement  is  nothing'; 
to  him ;  no  matter  what  happens  in  the  treble,  it  is  his  • 
task  to  saw  out  one  long-drawn  and  lugubrious  note  after 
another,  from  four  o’clock  in  the  afternoon  until  nearly 
the  same  hour  next  morning,  for  his  third  of  the  total 
income  of  one  dollar  per  hour. 

Before  the  feast  has  been  five  minutes  under  way, 
Tamoszius  Kuszleika  has  risen  in  his  excitement ;  a  min¬ 
ute  or  two  more  and  you  see  that  he  is  beginning  to  edge 
over  toward  the  tables.  His  nostrils  are  dilated  and  his 
breath  comes  fast — his  demons  are  driving  him.  He 
'aods  and  shakes  his  head  at  his  companions,  jerking  at 


I'HE  JUNGLE 


7 


them  with  his  violin,  until  at  last  the  long  form  of  the 
second  violinist  also  rises  up.  In  the  end  all  three  ol 
them  begin  advancing,  step  by  step,  upon  the  banqueters, 
Valentina vyczia,  the  ’cellist,  bumping  along  with  his  in¬ 
strument  between  notes.  Finally  all  three  are  gathered  at 
the  foot  of  the  tables,  and  there  Tamoszius  mounts  upon  a 
stool. 

Now  he  is  in  his  glory,  dominating  the  scene.  Some,  of 
the  people  are  eating,  some  are  laughing  and  talking — but 
you  will  make  a  great  mistake  if  you  think  there  is  one 
of  them  who  does  not  hear  him.  His  notes  are  never 
true,  and  his  fiddle  buzzes  on  the  low  ones  and  squeaks 
and  scratches  on  the  high  ;  but  these  things  they  heed  no 
more  than  they  heed  the  dirt  and  noise  and  squalor  about 
them  —  it  is  out  of  this  material  that  they  have  to  build 
their  lives,  with  it  that  they  have  to  utter  their  souls. 
And  this  is  their  utterance;  merry  and  boisterous,  or 
mournful  and  wailing,  or  passionate  and  rebellious,  this 
music  is  their  music,  music  of  home.  It  stretches  out 
its  arms  to  them,  they  have  only  to  give  themselves  up. 
Chicago  and  its  saloons  and  its  slums  fade  away  —  there 
are  green  meadows  and  sunlit  rivers,  mighty  forests  and 
snow-clad  hills.  They  behold  home  landscapes  and  child¬ 
hood  scenes  returning ;  old  loves  and  friendships  begin  to 
waken,  old  joys  and  griefs  to  laugh  and  weep.  Some  fall 
back  and  close  their  eyes,  some  beat  upon  the  table.  Now 
and  then  one  leaps  up  with  a  cry  and  calls  for  this  song  or 
that ;  and  then  the  fire  leaps  brighter  in  Tamoszius’s  eyes, 
and  he  flings  up  his  fiddle  and  shouts  to  his  companions, 
and  away  they  go  in  mad  career.  The  company  takes  up 
the  choruses,  and  men  and  women  cry  out  like  all  pos- 
sessea  ,  ■‘ome  leap  to  their  feet  and  stamp  upon  the  floor, 
lifting  ,;heir  glasses  and  pledging  each  other.  Before 
long  it  occurs  to  some  one  to  demand  an  old  wedding- 
song,  which  celebrates  the  beauty  of  the  bride  and  the 
joys  of  love.  In  the  excitement  of  this  masterpiece 
Tamoszius  Kuszleika  begins  to  edge  in  between  the  tables, 
making  his  way  toward  the  head,  where  sits  the  bride. 
There  is  not  a  foot  of  space  between  the  chairs  of  the 


8 


THE  JUNGLE 


guests,  and  Tamoszius  is  so  short  that  he  pokes  them 
with  his  bow  whenever  he  reaches  over  for  the  low  notes; 
but  still  he  presses  in,  and  insists  relentlessly  that  his 
companions  must  follow.  During  their  progress,  needless 
to  say,  the  sounds  of  the  ’cello  are  pretty  well  extin¬ 
guished  ;  but  at  last  the  three  are  at  the  head,  and 
Tamoszius  takes  his  station  at  the  right  hand  of  the  bride 
and  begins  to  pour  out  his  soul  in  melting  strains. 

Little  Ona  is  too  excited  to  eat.  Once  in  a  while  she 
tastes  a  little  something,  when  Cousin  Marija  pinches  her 
elbow  and  reminds  her ;  but,  for  the  most  part,  she  sits  gaz¬ 
ing  with  the  same  fearful  eyes  of  wonder.  Teta  Elzbieta  is 
all  in  a  flutter,  like  a  humming-bird;  her  sisters,  too,  keep 
running  up  behind  her,  whispering,  breathless.  But  Ona 
seems  scarcely  to  hear  them — the  music  keeps  calling,  and 
the  far-oif  look  comes  back,  and  she  sits  with  her  hands 
pressed  together  over  her  heart.  Then  the  tears  begin  to 
come  into  her  eyes ;  and  as  she  is  ashamed  to  wipe  them 
away,  and  ashamed  to  let  them  run  down  her  cheeks,  she 
turns  and  shakes  her  head  a  little,  and  then  flushes  red 
when  she  sees  that  Jurgis  is  watching  her.  When  in  the 
end  Tamoszius  Kuszleika  has  reached  her  side,  and  is 
waving  his  magic  wand  above  her,  Ona’s  cheeks  are  scar¬ 
let,  and  she  looks  as  if  she  would  have  to  get  up  and  run 
away. 

In  this  crisis,  however,  she  is  saved  by  Marija  Berczyn- 
skas,  whom  the  muses  suddenly  visit.  Marija  is  fond  of 
a  song,  a  song  of  lovers’  parting ;  she  wishes  to  hear  it, 
and,  as  the  musicians  do  not  know  it,  she  has  risen,  and 
is  proceeding  to  teach  them.  Marija  is  short,  but  power¬ 
ful  in  build.  She  works  in  a  canning  factory,  and  all 
day  long  she  handles  cans  of  beef  that  weigh  fourteen 
pounds.  She  has  a  broad  Slavic  face,  with  prominent  red 
cheeks.  When  she  opens  her  mouth,  it  is  tragical,  but 
you  cannot  help  thinking  of  a  horse.  She  wears  a  blue 
flannel  shirt-waist,  which  is  now  rolled  up  at  the  sleeves, 
disclosing  her  brawny  arms ;  she  has  a  carving-fork  in  her 
hand,  with  which  she  pounds  on  the  table  to  mark  the 
time.  As  she  roars  her  song,  in  a  voice  of  which  it  is 


THE  JUNGLE 


9 


enough  to  say  that  it  leaves  no  portion  of  the  room  va¬ 
cant,  the  three  musicians  follow  her,  laboriously  and  note 
by  note,  but  averaging  one  note  behind;  thus  they  toil 
through  stanza  after  stanza  of  a  love-sick  swain’s  lamen¬ 
tation  :  — 

“  Sudiev’  kvietkeli,  tu  brangiausis; 

Sudiev’  ir  laime,  man  biednam, 
klatau  —  paskyre  teip  Aukszcziausis; 

Jog  vargt  ant  svieto  I'eik  vienam  I " 

When  the  song  is  over,  it  is  time  for  the  speech,  and 
old  Dede  Antanas  rises  to  his  feet.  Grandfather  An¬ 
thony,  J urgis’s  father,  is  not  more  than  sixty  years  of  age, 
but  you  would  think  that  he  was  eighty.  He  has  been 
only  six  months  in  America,  and  the  change  has  not  done 
him  good.  In  his  manhood  he  worked  in  a  cotton-mill, 
but  then  a  coughing  fell  upon  him,  and  he  had  to  leave ; 
out  in  the  country  the  trouble  disappeared,  but  he  has 
been  working  in  the  pickle-rooms  at  Durham’s,  and  the 
breathing  of  the  cold,  damp  air  all  day  has  brought  it 
back.  Now  as  he  rises  he  is  seized  with  a  coughing-fit. 
and  holds  himself  by  his  chair  and  turns  away  his  Wan 
and  battered  face  until  it  passes. 

Generally  it  is  the  custom  for  the  speech  at  a  veselija 
to  be  taken  out  of  one  of  the  books  and  learned  by 
heart;  but  in  his  youthful  days  Dede  Antanas  used  to 
be  a  scholar,  and  really  make  up  all  the  love-letters  of  his 
friends.  Now  it  is  understood  that  he  has  composed  an 
original  speech  of  congratulation  and  benediction,  and  this 
is  one  of  the  events  of  the  day.  Even  the  boys,  who  are 
romping  about  the  room,  draw  near  and  listen,  and  some 
of  the  women  sob  and  Avipe  their  aprons  in  their  eyes.  It 
is  very  solemn,  for  Antanas  Rudkus  has  become  possessed 
of  the  idea  that  he  has  not  much  longer  to  stay  with  his 
children.  His  speech  leaves  them  all  so  tearful  that  one 
of  the  guests,  Jokubas  Szedvilas,  who  keeps  a  delicates¬ 
sen  store  on  Halsted  Street,  and  is  fat  and  hearty,  is  moved 
to  rise  and  say  that  things  may  not  be  as  bad  as  that,  and 
then  to  go  on  and  make  a  little  speech  of  his  own,  in 
which  he  showers  congratulations  and  prophecies  of  hap- 

2 


10 


THl!:  JUJNWliE 


piness  upon  the  bride  and  groom,  proceeding  to  particu¬ 
lars  which  greatly  delight  the  young  men,  but  which 
cause  Ona  to  blush  more  furiously  than  ever.  Jokubas 
possesses  what  his  wife  complacently  describes  as  “poetis- 
zka  vaidintuve” — a  poetical  imagination. 

Now  a  good  many  of  the  guests  have  finished,  and,  since 
there  is  no  pretence  of  ceremony,  the  banquet  begins  to 
break  up.  Some  of  the  men  gather  about  the  bar ;  some 
wander  about,  laughing  and  singing ;  here  and  there 
will  be  a  little  group,  chanting  merrily,  and  in  sublime 
indifference  to  the  others  ’  and  to  the  orchestra  as  well. 
Everybody  is  more  or  less  restless  —  one  would  guess  that 
something  is  on  their  minds.  And  so  it  proves.  The  last 
tardy  diners  are  scarcely  given  time  to  finish,  before  the 
tables  and  the  debris  are  shoved  into  the  corner,  and 
the  chairs  and  the  babies  piled  out  of  the  way,  and  the 
real  celebration  of  the  evening  begins.  Then  Tamoszius 
Kuszleika,  after  replenishing  himself  with  a  pot  of  beer, 
returns  to  his  platform,  and,  standing  up,  reviews  the 
scene ;  he  taps  authoritatively  upon  the  side  of  his 
violin,  then  tucks  it  carefully  under  his  chin,  then  waves 
his  bow  in  an  elaborate  flourish,  and  finally  smites  the 
sounding  strings  and  closes  his  eyes,  and  floats  away  in 
spirit  upon  the  wings  of  a  dreamy  waltz.  His  companion 
follows,  but  with  his  eyes  open,  watching  where  he  treads, 
so  to  speak ;  and  finally  Valentinavyczia,  after  waiting  for 
a  little  and  beating  with  his  foot  to  get  the  time,  casts 
up  his  eyes  to  the  ceiling  and  begins  to  saw  —  “  Broom  1 
broom  I  broom  I  ” 

The  company  pairs  off  quickly,  and  the  whole  room  is 
soon  in  motion.  Apparently  nobody  knows  how  to  waltz, 
but  that  is  nothing  of  any  consequence  —  there  is  music, 
and  they  dance,  each  as  he  pleases,  just  as  before  they 
sang.  Most  of  them  prefer  the  “two-step,”  especially 
the  young,  with  whom  it  is  the  fashion.  The  older  people 
have  dances  from  home,  strange  and  complicated  steps 
which  they  execute  with  grave  solemnity.  Some  do  not 
dance  anything  at  all,  but  simply  hold  each  other’s  hands 
and  allow  the  undisciplined  joy  of  motion  to  express 


THE  JUNGLE 


11 


itself  with  their  feet.  Among  these  are  Jokubas  Szedviias 
and  his  wife,  Lucija,  who  together  keep  the  delicatessen 
store,  and  consume  nearly  as  much  as  they  sell ;  they  are 
too  fat  to  dance,  but  they  stand  in  the  middle  of  the 
floor,  holding  each  other  fast  in  their  arms,  rocking  slowly 
from  side  to  side  and  grinning  seraphically,  a  picture  of 
toothless  and  perspiring  ecstasy. 

Of  these  older  people  many  wear  clothing  reminiscent 
in  some  detail  of  home  —  an  embroidered  waistcoat  or 
stomacher,  or  a  gayly  colored  handkerchief,  or  a  coat  with 
large  cuffs  and  fancy  buttons.  All  these  things  are  care¬ 
fully  avoided  by  the  young,  most  of  whom  have  learned 
to  speak  English  and  to  affect  the  latest  style  of  clothing. 
The  girls  wear  ready-made  dresses  or  shirt-waists,  and 
some  of  them  look  quite  pretty.  Some  of  the  young  men 
you  would  take  to  be  Americans,  of  the  type  of  clerks, 
but  for  the  fact  that  they  wear  their  hats  in  the  room. 
Each  of  these  younger  couples  affects  a  style  of  its  own 
in  dancing.  Some  hold  each  other  tightly,  some  at  a  cau¬ 
tious  distance.  Some  hold  their  arms  out  stiffly,  some 
drop  them  loosely  at  their  sides.  Some  dance  springily, 
some  glide  softly,  some  move  with  grave  dignity.  There 
are  boisterous  couples,  who  tear  wildly  about  the  room, 
knocking  every  one  out  of  their  way.  There  are  nervous 
couples,  whom  these  frighten,  and  who  cry,  “Nustok! 
Kas  yra?”  at  them  as  they  pass.  Each  couple  is  paired 
for  the  evening  —  you  will  never  see  them  change  about. 
There  is  Alena  Jasaityte,  for  instance,  who  has  danced 
unending  hours  with  Juozas  Raczius,  to  whom  she  is 
engaged.  Alena  is  the  beauty  of  the  evening,  and  she 
would  be  really  beautiful  if  she  were  not  so  proud.  She 
wears  a  white  shirt-waist,  which  represents,  perhaps,  half 
a  week’s  labor  painting  cans.  She  holds  her  skirt  with 
her  hand  as  she  dances,  with  stately  precision,  after  the 
manner  of  the  grander  dames.  Juozas  is  driving  one  of 
Durham’s  wagons,  and  is  making  big  wages.  He  affects 
a  “  tough  ”  aspect,  wearing  his  hat  on  one  side  and  keep¬ 
ing  a  cigarette  in  his  mouth  all  the  evening.  Then  there 
is  Jadvyga  Marcinkus,  who  is  also  beautiful,  but  humble 


12 


THE  JUNGLE 


J  advyga  likewise  paints  cans,  bnt  then  she  has  an  invalid 
mother  and  three  little  sisters  to  support  by  it,  and  so  she 
does  not  spend  her  wages  for  shirt-waists.  Jadvyga  is 
Email  and  delicate,  with  jet-black  eyes  and  hair,  the  latter 
twisted  into  a  little  knot  and  tied  on  the  top  of  her  head. 
She  wears  an  old  white  dress  which  she  has  made  herself 
and  worn  to  parties  for  the  past  five  years;  it  is  high- 
waisted  —  almost  under  her  arms,  and  not  very  becoming, 
—  but  that  does  not  trouble  Jadvyga,  who  is  dancing  with 
her  Mikolas.  She  is  small,  while  he  is  big  and  powerful ; 
she  nestles  in  his  arms  as  if  she  would  hide  herself  from 
view,  and  leans  her  head  upon  his  shoulder.  He  in  turn 
has  clasped  his  arms  tightly  around  her,  as  if  he  would 
carry  her  away;  and  so  she  dances,  and  will  dance  the 
entire  evening,  and  would  dance  forever,  in  ecstasy  of 
bliss.  You  would  smile,  perhaps,  to  see  them — but  you 
would  not  smile  if  you  knew  all  the  story.  This  is  the 
fifth  year,  now,  that  Jadvyga  has  been  engaged  to  Mikolas, 
and  her  heart  is  sick.  They  would  have  been  married  in 
the  beginning,  only  Mikolas  has  a  father  who  is  drunk  all 
day,  and  he  is  the  only  other  man  in  a  large  family.  E-ven 
so  they  might  have  managed  it  (for  Mikolas  is  a  skilled 
man)  but  for  cruel  accidents  which  ha\e  almost  taken  the 
heart  out  of  them.  He  is  a  beef-boner,  and  that  is  a  dan¬ 
gerous  trade,  especially  when  you  are  on  piece-work  and 
trying  to  earn  a  bride.  Your  hands  are  slippery,  and 
your  knife  is  slippery,  and  you  are  toiling  like  mad,  when 
somebody  happens  to  speak  to  you,  or  you  strike  a  bone. 
Then  your  hand  slips  up  on  the  blade,  and  there  is  a  fear* 
ful  gash.  And  that  would  not  be  so  bad,  only  for  the 
deadly  contagion.  The  cut  may  heal,  but  you  never  can 
tell.  Twice  now,  within  the  last  three  years,  Mikolas  has 
been  lying  at  home  with  blood-poisoning — -once  for  three 
months  and  once  for  nearly  seven.  The  last  time,  too,  he 
lost  his  job,  arid  that  meant  six  weeks  more  of  standing 
at  the  doors  of  the  packing-houses,  at  six  o’clock  on  bitter 
winter  mornings,  with  a  foot  of  snow  on  the  ground  and 
more  in  the  air.  There  are  learned  people  who  can  tell 
vou  out  of  the  statistics  that  beef -boners  make  forty  cents 


THE  JUHGLE 


13 


an  hour,  hut,  perhaps,  these  people  have  never  looked  into 
a  beef-boner’s  hands. 

When  Tamoszius  and  his  companions  stop  for  a  rest,  as 
perforce  they  must,  now  and  then,  the  dancers  halt  where 
they  are  and  wait  patiently.  They  never  seem  to  tire ; 
and  there  is  no  place  for  them  to  sit  down  if  they  did. 
It  is  only  for  a  minute,  anyway,  for  the  leader  starts  up 
again,  in  spite  of  all  the  protests  of  the  other  two.  This 
time  it  is  another  sort  of  a  dance,  a  Lithuanian  dance. 
Those  who  prefer  to,  go  on  with  the  two-step,  but  the 
majority  go  through  an  intricate  series  of  motions,  resem¬ 
bling  more  fancy  skating  than  a  dance.  The  climax  of  it 
is  a  furious  prestissimo^  at  which  the  couples  seize  hands 
and  begin  a  mad  whirling.  This  is  quite  irresistible,  and 
every  one  in  the  room  joins  in,  until  the  place  becomes  a 
maze  of  fljdng  skirts  and  bodies,  quite  dazzling  to  look 
upon.  But  the  sight  of  sights  at  tliis  moment  is  Tamos- 
zius  Kuszleika.  The  old  fiddle  squeaks  and  shrieks  in 
protest,  but  Tamoszius  has  no  mercy.  The  sweat  starts 
out  on  his  forehead,  and  he  bends  over  like  a  cyclist  on 
the  last  lap  of  a  race.  His  body  shakes  and  throbs  like  a 
runaway  steam-engine,  and  the  ear  cannot  follow  the  fly¬ 
ing  showers  of  notes — there  is  a  pale  blue  mist  where  you 
look  to  see  his  bowing  arm.  With  a  most  wonderful 
rush  he  comes  to  the  end  of  the  tune,  and  flings  up  his 
hands  and  staggers  back  exhausted;  and  with  a  final 
shout  of  delight  the  dancers  fly  apart,  reeling  here  and 
there,  bringing  up  against  the  walls  of  the  room. 

After  this  there  is  beer  for  every  one,  the  musicians  in¬ 
cluded,  and  the  revellers  take  a  long  breath  and  prepare 
for  the  great  event  of  tlie  evening,  which  is  the  acziavimas. 
The  acziavimas  is  a  ceremony  which,  once  begun,  will  con¬ 
tinue  for  three  or  four  hours,  and  it  involves  one  uninter¬ 
rupted  dance.  The  guests  form  a  great  ring,  locking 
bands,  and,  when  the  music  starts  up,  begin  to  move 
around  in  a  circle.  In  the  centre  stands  the  bride,  and, 
one  by  one,  the  men  step  into  the  enclosure  and  dance 
with  her.  Each  dances  for  several  minutes  —  as  long  as 
he  pleases ;  it  is  a  very  merry  proceeding,  with  laughter 


14 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  singing,  and  when  the  guest  has  finished,  he  finds 
himself  face  to  face  with  Teta  Elzbieta,  who  holds  the 
hat.  Into  it  he  drops  a  sum  of  money — a  dollar,  Or  per¬ 
haps  five  dollars,  according  to  his  power,  and  his  estimate 
of  the  value  of  the  privilege.  The  guests  are  expected 
to  pay  for  this  entertainment ;  if  they  be  proper  guests, 
they  will  see  that  there  is  a  neat  sum  left  over  for  the 
bride  and  bridegroom  to  start  life  upon. 

Most  fearful  they  are  to  contemplate,  the  expenses  of 
this  entertainment.  They  will  certainly  be  over  two  hun¬ 
dred  dollars,  and  may  be  three  hundred;  and  three  hun¬ 
dred  dollars  is  more  than  the  year’s  income  of  many  a 
person  in  this  room.  There  are  able-bodied  men  here 
who  work  from  early  morning  until  late  at  night,  in  ice- 
cold  cellars  with  a  quarter  of  an  inch  of  water  on  the 
floor  —  men  who  for  six  or  seven  months  in  the  year  never 
see  the  sunlight  from  Sunday  afternoon  till  the  next  Sun¬ 
day  morning  —  and  who  cannot  earn  three  hundred  dol¬ 
lars  in  a  year.  There  are  little  children  here,  scarce  in 
their  teens,  who  can  hardly  see  the  top  of  the  work 
benches  —  whose  parents  have  lied  to  get  them  their 
places  —  and  who  do  not  make  the  half  of  three  hundred 
dollars  a  year,  and  perhaps  not  even  tlie  third  of  it.  And 
then  to  spend  such  a  sum,  all  in  a  single  day  of  your  life, 
at  a  wedding -f east  1  (For  obviously  it  is  the  same  thing, 
whether  you  spend  it  at  once  for  your  own  wedding,  or  in 
a  long  time,  at  the  weddings  of  all  your  friends.) 

It  is  very  imprudent,  it  is  tragic  —  but,  ah,  it  is  so  beau¬ 
tiful  I  Bit  by  bit  these  poor  people  have  given  up  every¬ 
thing  else ;  but  to  this  they  cling  with  all  the  power  of 
their  souls  —  they  cannot  gi  ve  up  the  veselija  !  To  do  that 
would  mean,  not  merely  to  be  defeated,  but  tO  acknowl¬ 
edge  defeat  —  and  the  difference  between  these  two  things 
is  what  keeps  the  world  going.  The  veselija  has  come 
down  to  them  from  a  far-off  time ;  and  the  meaning  of  it 
was  that  one  might  dwell  within  the  cave  and  gaze  upon 
shadows,  provided  only  that  once  in  his  lifetime  he  could 
break  his  chains,  and  feel  his  wings,  and  behold  the  sun  ; 
WOTided  that  once  in  his  lifetime  he  might  testify  to  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


15 


fact  that  life,  with  all  its  cares  and  its  terrors,  is  no  such 
great  thing  after  all,  but  merely  a  bubble  upon  the  surface 
of  a  river,  a  thing  that  one  may  toss  about  and  play  with 
as  a  juggler  tosses  liis  golden  balls,  a  thing  that  one  may 
quaff,  like  a  goblet  of  rare  red  wine.  Thus  having  known 
himself  for  the  master  of  things,  a  man  could  go  back  to 
his  toil  and  live  upon  the  memory  all  his  days. 

Endlessly  the  dancers  swung  round  and  round — when 
they  were  dizzy  they  swung  the  other  way.  Hour  after 
hour  this  had  continued  —  the  darkness  had  fallen  and  the 
room  was  dim  from  the  light  of  two  smoky  oil  lamps. 
The  musicians  had  spent  all  their  fine  frenzy  by  now,  and 
played  only  one  tune,  wearily,  ploddingly.  There  were 
twenty  bars  or  so  of  it,  and  when  they  came  to  the  end 
they  began  again.  Once  every  ten  minutes  or  so  they 
would  fail  to  begin  again,  but  instead  would  sink  back 
exhausted  ;  a  circumstance  which  invariably  brought  on 
a  painful  and  terrifying  scene,  that  made  the  fat  police* 
man  stir  uneasily  in  his  sleeping-place  behind  the  door. 

It  was  all  Marija  Berczynskas.  Marija  was  one  of  those 
hungry  souls  who  cling  with  desperation  to  the  skirts  of 
the  retreating  muse.  All  day  long  she  had  been  in  a  state 
of  wonderful  exaltation;  and  now  it  was  leaving  —  and 
she  would  not  let  it  go.  Her  soul  cried  out  in  the  words 
of  Faust,  “  Stay,  thou  art  fair!  ”  Whether  it  was  by  beer, 
or  by  shouting,  or  by  music,  or  by  motion,  she  meant  that 
it  should  not  go.  '  And  she  would  go  back  to  the  chase  of 
it  —  and  no  sooner  be  fairly  started  than  her  chariot  would 
be  thrown  off  the  track,  so  to  speak,  by  the  stupidity  of 
those  thrice-accursed  musicians.  Each  time,  Marija  would 
emit  a  howl  and  fly  at  them,  shaking  her  fists  in  their 
faces,  stamping  upon  the  floor,  purple  and  incoherent  witf 
rage.  In  vain  the  frightened  Tamoszius  would  attempt 
to  speak,  to  plead  the  limitations  of  the  flesh  in  vain 
would  the  puffing  and  breathless  ponas  Jokubas  insist,  ir' 
vain  would  Teta  Elzbieta  implore.  “  Szalin  1  ”  IMarija  would 
scream,  “PalaukI  isz  kelio!  What  are  you  paid  for, 
children  of  hell?  ”  And  so,  in  sheer  terror,  the  orchestra 


16 


THE  JUNGLE 


would  strike  iip  again,  and  Marija  would  return  to  her 
place  and  take  up  her  task. 

She  bore  all  the  burden  of  the  festivities  now.  Ona 
was  kept  up  by  her  excitement,  but  all  of  the  women  and 
most  of  the  men  were  tired  —  the  soul  of  Marija  was  alone 
unconquered.  She  drove  on  the  dancers  —  what  had  once 
been  the  ring  had  now  the  shape  of  a  pear,  with  Marija  at 
the  stem,  pulling  one  way  and  pushing  the  other,  shouting, 
stamping,  singing,  a  very  volcano  of  energy.  Now  and 
then  some  one  coming  in  or  out  would  leave  the  door  open, 
and  the  night  air  was  chill ;  Marija  as  she  passed  would 
stretch  out  her  foot  and  kick  the  door-knob,  and  slam 
would  go  the  doorl  Once  this  procedure  was  the  cause  of 
a  calamity  of  which  Sebastijonas  Szedvilas  was  the  hapless 
victim.  Little  Sebastijonas,  aged  three,  had  been  wander¬ 
ing  about  oblivious  to  all  things,  holding  turned  up  over 
his  mouth  a  bottle  of  liquid  known  as  “pop,”  pink- 
colored,  ice-cold,  and  delicious.  Passing  through  the 
doorway  the  door  smote  him  full,  and  the  shriek  which 
followed  brought  the  dancing  to  a  halt.  Marija,  who 
threatened  horrid  murder  a  hundred  times  a  day,  and 
would  weep  over  the  injury  of  a  fly,  seized  little  Sebasti¬ 
jonas  in  her  arms  and  bid  fair  to  smother  him  with  kisses. 
There  was  a  long  rest  for  the  orchestra,  and  plenty  of 
refreshments,  while  Marija  was  making  her  peace  with 
her  victim,  seating  him  upon  the  bar,  and  standing  beside 
him  and  holding  to  his  lips  a  foaming  schooner  of  beer. 

In  the  meantime  there  was  going  on  in  another  corner 
of  the  room  an  anxious  conference  between  Teta  Elzbieta 
and  Dede  Antanas,  and  a  few  of  the  more  intimate  friends 
of  the  family.  A  trouble  was  come  upon  them.  The 
veselija  is  a  compact,  a  compact  not  expressed,  but  there¬ 
fore  only  the  more  binding  upon  all.  Every  one’s  share 
was  different — and  yet  every  one  knew  perfectly  well 
what  his  share  was,  and  strove  to  give  a  little  more.  Now, 
however,  since  they  had  come  to  the  new  country,  all  this 
was  changing ;  it  seemed  as  if  there  must  be  some  subtle 
poison  in  the  air  that  one  breathed  here  —  it  was  affecting 
all  the  young  men  at  once.  They  would  come  in  crowds 


THE  JUNGLE 


17 


and  fill  themselves  with  a  fine  dinner,  and  then  sneak  off. 
One  would  throw  another’s  hat  out  of  the  window,  and 
both  would  go  out  to  get  it,  and  neither  would  be  seen 
again.  Or  now  and  then  half  a  dozen  of  tliem  would  get 
together  and  march  out  openly,  staring  at  you,  and  mak¬ 
ing  fun  of  you  to  your  face.  Still  others,  v/orse  yet, 
would  crowd  about  the  bar,  and  at  the  expense  of  the  host 
drink  themselves  sodden,  paying  not  the  least  attention 
to  any  one,  and  leaving  it  to  be  thought  that  either  they 
had  danced  with  the  bride  already,  or  meant  to  later  on. 

All  these  things  were  going  on  now,  and  the  family 
was  helpless  with  dismay.  So  long  they  had  toiled,  and 
such  an  outlay  they  had  made!  Ona  stood  by,  her  eyes 
wide  with  terror.  Those  frightful  bills  —  how  they  had 
hauirted  her,  each  item  gnawing  at  her  soul  all  day  and 
spoiling  her  rest  at  night.  How  often  she  had  named 
them  over  one  by  oire  and  figured  on  them  as  she  went  to 
work —  fifteen  dollars  for  the  hall,  twenty-two  dollars 
and  a  quarter  for  the  ducks,  twelve  dollars  for  the  musi¬ 
cians,  five  dollars  at  the  church,  and  a  blessing  of  the 
Virgin  besides  —  and  so  on  without  an  end  I  Worst  of 
all  was  the  frightful  bill  that  was  still  to  come  from  Graic- 
zunas  for  the  beer  and  liquor  that  might  be  consumed. 
One  could  never  get  in  advance  more  than  a  guess  as  to 
this  from  a  saloon-keeper  —  and  then,  when  the  time  came 
he  always  came  to  you  scratching  his  head  and  sa3dng 
that  he  had  guessed  too  low,  but  that  he  had  done  his 
best  —  your  guests  had  gotten  so  very  drunk.  B}'-  him 
you  were  sure  to  be  cheated  unmercifully,  and  that  even 
though  you  thought  yourself  the  dearest  of  the  hundreds 
of  friends  he  had.  He  would  begin  to  serve  3mur  guests 
out  of  a  keg  that  was  half  full,  and  finish  with  one  that 
was  half  empty,  and  then  you  would  be  charged  for  two 
kegs  of  beer.  He  would  agree  to  serve  a  certain  quality 
at  a  certain  price,  and  when  the  time  came  you  and  your 
friends  would  be  drinking  some  horrible  poison  that  could 
not  be  described.  You  might  complain,  but  you  would 
get  nothing  for  your  pains  but  a  ruined  evening  ;  while, 
as  for  going  to  law  about  it,  you  might  as  well  go  to 


18 


THE  JUNGLE 


heaven  at  once.  The  saloon-keeper  stood  in  with  all  the 
big  politics  men  in  the  district ;  and  when  you  had  once 
found  out  what  it  meant  to  get  into  trouble  with  such 
people,  you  would  know  enough  to  pay  what  you  were 
told  to  pay  and  shut  up. 

What  made  all  this  the  more  painful  was  that  it  was  so 
hard  on  the  few  that  had  really  done  their  best.  There 
was  poor  old  ponas  Jokubas,  for  instance  —  he  had  already 
given  five  dollars,  and  did  not  every  one  know  that  JokabL_ 
Szedvilas  had  just  mortgaged  his  delicatessen  store  for  two 
hundred  dollars  to  meet  several  months’  overdue  rent  ? 
And  then  there  was  withered  old  poni  Aniele  —  who  was 
a  widow,  and  had  three  children,  and  the  rheumatism  be¬ 
sides,  and  did  washing  for  the  tradespeople  on  Halsted 
Street  at  prices  it  would  break  your  heart  to  hear  named. 
Aniele  had  given  the  entire  profit  of  her  chickens  for  sev¬ 
eral  months.  Eight  of  them  she  ovmed,  and  she  kept  them 
in  a  little  place  fenced  around  on  her  backstairs.  All  day 
long  the  children  of  Aniele  were  raking  in  the  dump  for 
food  for  these  chickens ;  and  sometimes,  when  the  compe¬ 
tition  there  was  too  fierce,  you  might  see  them  on  Halsted 
Street,  walking  close  to  the  gutters,  and  with  their  mother 
following  to  see  that  no  one  robbed  them  of  their  finds. 
Money  could  not  tell  the  value  of  these  chickens  to  old 
Mrs.  Jukniene  —  she  valued  them  differently,  for  she  had 
a  feeling  that  she  was  getting  something  for  nothing  by 
means  of  them  —  that  with  them  she  was  getting  the 
better  of  a  world  that  was  getting  the  better  of  her  in  so 
many  other  ways.  So  she  watched  them  every  hour  of  the 
day,  and  had  learned  to  see  like  an  owl  at  night  to  watch 
them  then.  One  of  them  had  been  stolen  long  ago,  and 
not  a  month  passed  that  some  one  did  not  try  to  steal 
another.  As  the  frustrating  of  this  one  attempt  involved 
a  score  of  false  alarms,  it  will  be  understood  what  a  trib¬ 
ute  old  Mrs.  Jukniene  brought,  just  because  Teta  Elzbieta 
had  once  loaned  her  some  money  for  a  few  days  and  saved 
her  from  being  turned  out  of  her  house. 

More  and  more  friends  gathered  round  while  the  lamen* 


THE  JUNGLE 


19 


tatiou  about  these  things  was  going  on.  Some  drew  nearer, 
hoping  to  overhear  the  conversation,  who  were  themselves 
among  the  guilty  —  and  surely  that  was  a  thing  to  try  the 
patience  of  a  saint.  Finally  there  came  Jurgis,  urged  by 
some  one,  and  the  story  was  retold  to  him.  Jui’gis  listened 
in  silence,  with  his  great  black  eyebrows  knitted.  Now 
and  then  there  would  come  a  gleam  underneath  them 
and  he  would  glance  about  the  room.  Perhaps  he 
would  have  liked  to  go  at  some  of  those  fellows  Avith  his 
big  clenched  fists ;  but  then,  doubtless,  he  realized  how 
little  good  it  would  do  him.  No  bill  would  be  any  less 
for  turning  out  any  one  at  this  time  ;  and  then  there 
would  be  the  scandal — and  Jurgis  wanted  nothing  ex¬ 
cept  to  get  away  with  Ona  and  to  let  the  world  go  its 
own  M^ay.  So  his  hands  relaxed  and  he  merely  said 
quietly:  “It  is  done,  and  there  is  no  use  in  weeping,  Teta 
Elzbieta.”  Then  his  look  turned  toward  Ona,  who  stood 
close  to  his  side,  and  he  saw  the  wide  look  of  terror  in  her 
eyes.  “  Little  one,”  he  said,  in  a  low  voice,  “  do  not  worry 
—  it  will  not  matter  to  us.  We  will  pay  them  all  some¬ 
how.  I  will  work  harder.”  That  was  always  what 
Jurgis  said.  Ona  had  grown  used  to  it  as  the  solution 
of  all  difficulties  —  “I  will  work  harder  !  ”  He  had  said 
that  in  Lithuania  when  one  official  liad  taken  his  passport 
from  him,  and  another  had  arrested  him  for  being  without 
it,  and  the  two  had  divided  a  third  of  his  belongings.  He 
had  said  it  again  in  New  York,  when  the  smooth-spoken 
agent  had  taken  them  in  hand  and  made  them  pay  such 
high  prices,  and  almost  prevented  their  leaving  his  place, 
in  spite  of  their  paying.  Now  he  said  it  a  third  time,  and 
Ona  drew  a  deep  breath ;  it  was  so  wonderful  to  have 
a  husband,  just  like  a  grown  woman  —  and  a  husband 
who  could  solve  all  problems,  and  who  was  so  big  and 
strong  I 

The  last  sob  of  little  Sebastijonas  has  been  stifled,  and 
the  orchestra  has  once  more  been  reminded  of  its  duty. 
The  ceremony  begins  again  —  but  there  are  few  now  left 
to  dance  with,  and  so  very  soon  the  collection  is  over  and 


20 


THE  JUNGLE 


promiscuous  dances  once  more  begin.  It  is  now  after  mid' 
night,  however,  and  things  are  not  as  they  were  before. 
The  dancers  are  dull  and  heavy — most  of  them  have  been 
drinking  hard,  and  have  long  ago  passed  the  stage  of  ex¬ 
hilaration.  They  dance  in  monotonous  measure,  round 
after  round,  hour  after  hour,  with  eyes  fixed  upon  vacancy, 
as  if  they  were  only  lialf  conscious,  in  a  coiistantly  growing 
stupor.  The  men  grasp  the  women  very  tightly,  but  there 
will  be  half  an  hour  together  when  neither  will  see  the 
other’s  face.  Some  couples  do  not  care  to  dance,  and  have 
retired  to  the  corners,  where  they  sit  with  their  arms  en¬ 
laced.  Others,  who  have  been  drinking  still  more,  wander 
about  the  room,  bumping  into  everytliing ;  some  are  in 
groups  of  two  or  three,  singing,  each  group  its  own  song. 
As  time  goes  on  there  is  a  variety  of  drunkenness,  among 
the  younger  men  especially.  Some  stagger  about  in  each 
other’s  arms,  whispering  maudlin  words — others  start  quar¬ 
rels  upon  the  slightest  pretext,  and  come  to  blows  and  have 
to  be  pulled  apart.  Now  the  fat  policeman  wakens  defi¬ 
nitely,  and  feels  of  his  club  to  see  that  it  is  ready  for 
business.  He  has  to  be  prompt  —  for  these  two-o’clock- 
in-the-morning  fights,  if  they  once  get  out  of  hand,  are 
like  a  forest  fire,  and  may  mean  the  whole  reserves  at 
the  station.  The  thing  to  do  is  to  crack  every  fighting 
head  that  you  see,  before  there  are  so  many  fighting 
heads  that  you  cannot  crack  any  of  them.  There  is  but 
scant  account  kept  of  cracked  heads  in  back  of  the  yards, 
for  men  who  have  to  crack  the  heads  of  animals  all  day 
seem  to  get  into  the  habit,  and  to  practise  on  their  friends, 
and  even  on  their  families,  between  times.  This  makes  it 
a  cause  for  congratulation  that  by  modern  methods  a  very 
few  men  can  do  the  painfully  necessary  work  of  head¬ 
cracking  for  the  whole  of  the  cultured  world. 

There  is  no  fight  that  night  —  perhaps  because  Jurgis, 
too,  is  watchful  —  even  more  so  than  the  policeman. 
Jurgis  has  drunk  a  great  deal,  as  any  one  naturally  would 
on  an  occasion  when  it  all  has  to  be  paid  for,  whether  it  is 
drank  or  not  ;  but  he  is  a  very  steady  man,  and  does  not 
easily  lose  his  temper.  Only  oncp  there  is  a  ^’o’ht  shave-— 


THE  JUNGLE 


21 


and  that  is  the  fault  of  Marija  Berczynskas.  Marija  has 
apparently  concluded  about  two  hours  ago  that  if  the  altar 
in  the  corner,  with  the  deity  in  soiled  white,  be  not  the 
true  home  of  the  muses,  it  is,  at  any  rate,  the  nearest  sub¬ 
stitute  on  earth  attainable.  And  IMarija  is  just  fighting 
drunk  when  there  come  to  her  ears  the  facts  about  the 
villains  who  have  not  paid  that  night.  Marija  goes  on 
the  warpath  straight  off,  without  even  the  preliminary  of 
a  good  cursing,  and  when  she  is  pulled  off  it  is  with  the 
coat  collars  of  two  villains  in  her  hands.  Fortunately,  the 
policeman  is  disposed  to  be  reasonable,  and  so  it  is  not 
Marija  who  is  flung  out  of  the  place. 

All  this  interrupts  the  music  for  not  more  than  a  minute 
or  two.  Then  again  the  merciless  tune  begins  —  the  tune 
that  has  been  played  for  the  last  half-hour  without  one 
single  change.  It  is  an  American  tune  this  time,  one 
which  they  have  picked  up  on  the  streets;  all  seem  to 
know  the  words  of  it  —  or,  at  any  rate,  the  first  line  of  it, 
which  they  hum  to  themselves,  over  and  over  again  with¬ 
out  rest:  “In  the  good  old  summer  time  —  in  the  good 
old  summer  time!  In  the  good  old  summer  time  —  in  the 
good,  old  summer  time!  ”  There  seems  to  be  something 
hypnotic  about  this,  with  its  endlessly-recurring  domi¬ 
nant.  It  has  put  a  stupor  upon  every  one  who  hears  it, 
as  well  as  upon  the  men  who  are  playing  it.  No  one  can 
get  away  from  it,  or  even  think  of  getting  away  from  it ; 
it  is  three  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and  they  have  danced 
out  all  their  joy,  and  danced  out  all  their  strength,  and  all 
the  strength  that  unlimited  drink  can  lend  them  —  and 
still  there  is  no  one  among  them  who  has  the  power  to 
think  of  stopping.  Promptly  at  seven  o’clock  this  same 
Monday  morning  they  will  every  one  of  them  have  to  be 
in  their  places  at  Durham’s  or  Brown’s  or  Jones’s,  each  in 
his  working  clothes.  If  one  of  them  be  a  minute  late,  he 
will  be  docked  an  hour’s  pay,  and  if  he  be  many  minutes 
late,  he  will  be  apt  to  find  his  brass  check  turned  to  the 
wall,  which  will  send  him  out  to  join  the  hungry  mob  that 
waits  every  morning  at  the  gates  of  the  packing-houses, 
from  six  o’clock  until  nearly  half-past  eight.  There  is  no 


22 


THE  JUKGLE 


exception  to  this  rule,  not  even  little  Ona  —  who  has  asked 
for  a  holiday  the  day  after  her  fl^edding-day,  a  holiday 
without  pay,  and  been  refused.  While  there  are  so  many 
v/ho  are  anxious  to  work  as  you  wish,  there  is  no  occasion 
for  incommoding  yourself  with  those  who  must  work 
otherwise. 

Little  Ona  is  nearly  ready  to  faint — and  half  in  a  stupor 
herself,  because  of  the  heavy  scent  in  the  room.  She  has 
not  taken  a  drop,  but  every  one  else  there  is  literally  burn¬ 
ing  alcohol,  as  the  lamps  are  burning  oil ;  some  of  the 
men  who  are  sound  asleep  in  their  chairs  or  on  the  floor 
are  reeking  of  it  so  that  you  cannot  go  near  them.  Now 
and  then  Jurgis  gazes  at  her  hungrily  —  he  has  long  since 
forgotten  his  shyness ;  but  then  the  crowd  is  there,  and 
he  still  waits  and  watches  the  door,  where  a  carriage  is 
supposed  to  come.  It  does  not,  and  finally  he  will  wait 
no  longer,  but  comes  up  to  Ona,  who  turns  white  and 
trembles.  He  puts  her  shawl  about  her  and  then  his  own 
coat.  They  live  only  two  blocks  away,  and  Jurgis  does 
not  care  about  the  carriage. 

There  is  almost  no  farewell  —  the  dancers  do  not  notice 
them,  and  all  of  the  children  and  many  of  the  old  folks 
have  fallen  asleep  of  sheer  exhaustion.  Dede  Antanas  is 
asleep,  and  so  are  the  Szedvilases,  husband  and  wife,  the 
former  snoring  in  octaves.  There  is  Teta  Elzbieta,  and 
Marija,  sobbing  loudly ;  and  then  there  is  only  the  silent 
light,  with  the  stars  beginning  to  pale  a  little  in  the  east. 
Jurgis,  without  a  word,  lifts  Ona  in  his  arms,  and  strides 
out  with  her,  and  she  sinks  her  head  upon  his  shoulder 
with  a  moan.  When  he  reaches  home  he  is  not  sure 
whether  she  has  fainted  or  is  asleep,  but  when  he  has  to 
hold  her  with  one  hand  while  he  unlocks  the  door,  he  sees 
that  she  has  opened  her  eyes. 

“  You  shall  not  go  to  Brown’s  to-day,  little  one,”  he 
whispers,  as  he  climbs  the  stairs  ;  and  she  catches  his  arm 
in  terror,  gasping:  “No  I  No!  I  dare  not  I  It  will  ruin 
us!’” 

But  he  answers  her  again:  “Leave  it  to  me;  leave  it 
to  me.  I  will  earn  more  money  —  I  will  work  harder.” 


CHAPTER  II 


JuRGis  talked  lightly  about  work,  because  he  was  young. 
They  told  him  stories  about  the  breaking  down  of  men, 
there  in  the  stockyards  of  Chicago,  and  of  what  had  hap¬ 
pened  to  them  afterwards  —  stories  to  make  your  flesh 
creep,  but  Jurgis  would  only  laugh.  He  had  only  been 
there  four  months,  and  he  was  young,  and  a  giant  besides. 
There  was  too  much  health  in  him.  He  could  not  even 
imagine  how  it  would  feel  to  be  beaten.  “  That  is  well 
enough  for  men  like  you,”  he  would  say,  silpnas^  P^^iy 
fellows  —  but  my  back  is  broad.” 

Jurgis  was  like  a  boy,  a  boy  from  the  country.  He  was 
the  sort  of  man  the  bosses  like  to  get  hold  of,  the  sort  they 
make  it  a  grievance  they  cannot  get  hold  of.  When  he 
was  told  to  go  to  a  certain  place,  he  would  go  there  on  the 
run.  When  he  had  nothing  to  do  for  the  moment,  he 
would  stand  round  fidgeting,  dancing,  with  the  overflow 
of  energy  that  was  in  him.  If  he  were  working  in  a  line 
of  men,  the  line  always  moved  too  slowly  for  him,  and  you 
could  pick  him  out  by  his  impatience  and  restlessness. 
That  was  why  he  had  been  picked  out  on  one  important 
occasion  ;  for  Jurgis  had  stood  outside  of  Brown  and  Com¬ 
pany’s  “Central  Time  Station”  not  more  than  half  an 
hour,  the  second  day  of  his  arrival  in  Chicago,  before  he 
had  been  beckoned  by  one  of  the  bosses.  Of  this  he  was 
very  proud,  and  it  made  him  more  disposed  than  ever  to 
laugh  at  the  pessimists.  In  vain  would  the}*  all  tell  him 
that  there  were  men  in  that  crowd  from  which  he  had 
been  chosen  who  had  stood  there  a  month  —  yes,  many 
months  —  and  not  been  chosen  yet.  “Yes,”  he  would 
say,  “  but  what  sort  of  men  'I  Broken-down  tramps 
and  good-for-nothings,  fellows  who  have  spent  all  their 
money  drinking,  and  want  to  get  more  for  it.  Do  you 

23 


24 


THE  JEIJGLE 


want  me  to  believe  that  with  these  arms  ”  ~  and  he  would 
clench  his  fists  and  hold  them  up  in  the  air,  so  that  you 
might  see  the  rolling  muscles  —  “that  with  these  arms 
people  Avill  ever  let  me  starve  ?  ” 

“  It  is  plain,”  they  would  answer  to  this,  “  that  you  have 
come  from  the  country,  and  from  very  far  in  the  country.” 
And  this  was  the  fact,  for  Jurgis  had  never  seen  a  city, 
and  scarcely  even  a  fair-sized  town,  until  he  had  set  out 
to  make  his  fortune  in  the  world  and  earn  his  right  to 
Ona.  His  father,  and  his  father’s  father  before  him,  and 
as  many  ancestors  back  as  legend  could  go,  had  lived  in 
that  part  of  Lithuania  knowm  as  Brelovioz^  the  Imperial 
Forest.  This  is  a  great  tract  of  a  hundred  thousand  acres, 
which  from  time  immemorial  has  been  a  hunting  preserve 
of  the  nobility.  There  are  a  very  few  peasants  settled  in 
it,  holding  title  from  ancient  times  ;  and  one  of  these  was 
Antanas  Rudkus,  who  had  been  reared  himself,  and  had 
reared  his  children  in  turn,  upon  half  a  dozen  acres  of 
cleared  land  in  the  midst  of  a  wilderness.  There  had  been 
one  son  besides  Jurgis,  and  one  sister.  The  former  had 
been  drafted  into  the  army ;  that  had  been  over  ten  years 
ago,  but  since  that  day  nothing  had  ever  been  heard  of 
him.  The  sister  was  married,  and  her  husband  had  bought 
the  place  when  old  Antanas  had  decided  to  go  with  his 
son. 

It  was  nearly  a  year  and  a  half  ago  that  Jurgis  had  met 
Ona,  at  a  horse-fair  a  hundred  miles  from  home.  Jurgis 
had  never  expected  to  get  married  —  he  had  laughed  at  it 
as  a  foolish  trap  for  a  man  to  walk  into ;  but  here,  without 
ever  having  spoken  a  word  to  her,  with  no  more  than  the 
exchange  of  half  a  dozen  smiles,  he  found  himself, 
purple  in  the  face  with  embarrassment  and  terror,  asking 
her  parents  to  sell  her  to  him  for  his  wife  —  and  offering 
his  father’s  two  horses  he  had  been  sent  to  the  fair  to  sell. 
But  Ona’s  father  proved  as  a  rock  —  the  girl  was  yet  a 
child,  and  he  was  a  rich  man,  and  his  daughter  was  not  to 
be  had  in  that  way.  So  J  urgis  went  home  with  a  heavy 
heart,  and  that  spring  and  summer  toiled  and  tried  hard 
to  forget.  In  the  fall,  after  the  harvest  was  over,  he  saw 


THE  JUNGLE 


25 


that  it  would  not  do,  and  tramped  the  full  fortnight’s 
journey  that  lay  between  him  and  Ona. 

He  found  an  unexpected  state  of  affairs  —  for  the  girl’s 
father  had  died,  and  his  estate  was  tied  up  with  creditors ; 
Jurgis’s  heart  leaped  as  he  realized  that  now  the  prize  was 
within  his  reach.  There  was  Elzbieta  Lukoszaite,  Teta, 
or  Aunt,  as  they  called  her,  Ona’s  stepmother,  and  there 
were  her  six  children,  of  all  ages.  There  was  also  her 
brother  Jonas,  a  dried-up  little  man  who  had  worked  upon 
the  farm.  They  were  people  of  great  consequence,  as  it 
seemed  to  Jurgis,  fresh  out  of  the  woods  ;  Ona  knew  how 
to  read,  and  knew  many  other  things  that  he  did  not 
know;  and  now  the  farm  had  been  sold,  and  the  whole 
family  was  adrift  —  all  they  owned  in  the  world  being 
about  seven  hundred  roubles,  which  is  half  as  manj^  dol¬ 
lars.  They  would  have  had  three  times  that,  but  it  had 
gone  to  court,  and  the  judge  had  decided  against  them,  and 
it  had  cost  the  balance  to  get  him  to  change  his  decision. 

Ona  might  have  married  and  left  them,  but  she  would 
not,  for  she  loved  Teta  Elzbieta.  It  was  Jonas  who  sug¬ 
gested  that  they  all  go  to  America,  where  a  friend  of  his 
had  gotten  rich.  He  would  work,  for  his  part,  and  the 
women  would  work,  and  some  of  the  children,  doubtless 
—  they  would  live  somehow.  Jurgis,  too,  had  heard  of 
America.  That  was  a  country  where,  they  said,  a  man 
might  earn  three  roubles  a  day  ;  and  Jurgis  figured  what 
three  roubles  a  day  would  mean,  with  prices  as  they  were 
where  he  lived,  and  decided  forthwith  that  he  would  go 
to  America  and  marry,  and  be  a  rich  man  in  the  bargain. 
In  that  country,  rich  or  poor,  a  man  was  free,  it  was  said; 
he  did  not  have  to  go  into  the  army,  he  did  not  have  to 
pay  out  his  money  to  rascally  officials, — he  might  do  as  he 
pleased,  and  count  himself  as  good  as  any  other  man.  So 
America  was  a  place  of  which  lovers  and  young  people 
dreamed.  If  one  could  only  manage  to  get  the  price  of  a 
passage,  he  could  count  his  troubles  at  an  end. 

It  was  arranged  that  they  should  leave  the  following 
upring,  and  meantime  J  urgis  sold  himself  to  a  contractor 
for  a  certain  time,  and  tramped  nearly  four  hundred  miles 


26 


THE  JUNGLE 


from  home  with  a  gang  of  men  to  work  upon  a  railroad  in 
Smolensk.  This  was  a  fearful  experience,  with  filth  and 
bad  food  and  cruelty  and  overwork  ;  but  Jurgis  stood  it 
and  came  out  in  fine  trim,  and  with  eighty  roubles  sewed 
up  in  his  coat.  He  did  not  drink  or  fight,  because  he  was 
thinking  all  the  time  of  Ona ;  and  for  the  rest,  he  was  a 
quiet,  steady  man,  who  did  what  he  was  told  to,  did  not 
lose  his  temper  often,  and  when  he  did  lose  it  made  the 
offender  anxious  that  he  should  not  lose  it  again.  When 
they  paid  him  off  he  dodged  the  company  gamblers  and 
dramshops,  and  so  they  tried  to  kill  him  ;  but  he  escaped, 
and  tramped  it  home,  working  at  odd  jobs,  and  sleeping 
always  with  one  eye  open. 

So  in  the  summer  time  they  had  all  set  out  for  America. 
At  the  last  moment  there  joined  them  Marija  Berczynskas, 
who  Avas  a  cousin  of  Ona’s.  Marija  was  an  orphan,  and 
had  worked  since  childhood  for  a  rich  farmer  of  Vilna, 
Avho  beat  her  regularly.  It  was  only  at  the  age  of  twenty 
that  it  had  occurred  to  Marija  to  try  her  strength,  when 
she  had  risen  up  and  nearly  murdered  the  man,  and  then 
come  away. 

There  were  twelve  in  all  in  the  party,  five  adults  and 
six  children  —  and  Ona,  who  was  a  little  of  both.  They 
had  a  hard  time  on  the  passage ;  there  was  an  agent  who 
helped  them,  but  he  proved  a  scoundrel,  and  got  them  into 
a  trap  with  some  officials,  and  cost  them  a  good  deal  of 
their  precious  money,  which  they  clung  to  with  such  hor¬ 
rible  fear.  This  happened  to  them  again  in  New  York  — 
for,  of  course,  they  knew  nothing  about  the  country,  and 
had  no  one  to  tell  them,  and  it  was  easy  for  a  man  in  a 
blue  uniform  to  lead  them  away,  and  to  take  them  to  a 
hotel  and  keep  them  there,  and  make  them  pay  enormous 
charges  to  get  aAvay.  The  law  says  that  the  rate-card 
shall  be  on  the  door  of  a  hotel,  but  it  does  not  say  that  it 
shall  be  in  Lithuanian. 

It  was  in  the  stockyards  that  Jonas’s  friend  had  gotten 
rich,  and  so  to  Chicago  the  party  was  bound.  They  knew 
that  one  word,  Chicago,  —  and  that  was  all  they  needed 


THE  JUNGLE 


27 


to  know,  at  least,  until  they  reached  the  city.  Then, 
tumbled  out  of  the  cars  without  ceremony,  they  were  no 
better  off  than  before ;  they  stood  staring  down  the  vista 
of  Dearborn  Street,  with  its  big  black  buildings  towering 
in  the  distance,  unable  to  realize  that  they  .had  arrived, 
and  why,  when  they  said  “  Chicago,”  people  no  longer 
pointed  in  some  direction,  but  instead  looked  perplexed, 
or  laughed,  or  went  on  without  paying  any  attention. 
They  were  pitiable  in  their  helplessness;  above  all  things 
they  stood  in  deadly  terror  of  any  sort  of  person  in  official 
uniform,  and  so  whenever  they  saw  a  policeman  they  would 
cross  the  street  and  hurry  by.  For  the  whole  of  the  first 
day  they  wandered  about  in  the  midst  of  deafening  con¬ 
fusion,  utterly  lost ;  and  it  was  only  at  night  that,  cower¬ 
ing  in  the  doorway  of  a  house,  they  were  finally  discovered 
and  taken  by  a  policeman  to  the  station.  In  the  morning 
an  interpreter  was  found,  and  they  were  taken  and  put 
upon  a  car,  and  taught  a  new  word  —  “stockyards.” 
Their  delight  at  discovering  that  they  were  to  get  out 
of  this  adventure  without  losing  another  share  of  their 
possessions,  it  would  not  be  possible  to  describe. 

They  sat  and  stared  out  of  the  window.  They  were  on 
a  street  which  seemed  to  run  on  forever,  mile  after  mile  — 
thirty-four  of  them,  if  they  had  known  it  —  and  each  side 
of  it  one  uninterrupted  row  of  wretched  little  two-story 
frame  buildings.  Down  every  side  street  they  could  see, 
it  was  the  same,  —  never  a  hill  and  never  a  hollow,  but 
always  the  same  endless  vista  of  ugly  and  dirty  little 
wooden  buildings.  Here  and  there  would  be  a  bridge 
crossing  a  filthy  creek,  with  hard-baked  mud  shores  and 
dingy  sheds  and  docks  along  it ;  here  and  there  would  be 
a  railroad  crossing,  with  a  tangle  of  switches,  and  loco¬ 
motives  puffing,  and  rattling  freight-cars  filing  by ;  here 
and  there  would  be  a  great  factory,  a  dingy  building  with 
innumerable  windows  in  it,  and  immense  volumes  of  smoke 
pouring  from  the  chimneys,  darkening  the  air  above  and 
making  filthy  the  earth  beneath.  But  after  each  of  these 
interruptions,  the  desolate  procession  would  begin  again 
—  the  procession  of  dreary  little  buildings. 


28 


THE  JUNGLE 


A  fuR  hour  before  the  party  reached  the  city  they  had 
begun  to  note  the  perplexing  changes  in  the  atmosphere. 
It  grew  darker  all  the  time,  and  upon  the  earth  the  grass 
seemed  to  grow  less  green.  Every  minute,  as  the  train 
sped  on,  the  colors  of  things  became  dingier  ;  the  fields 
were  grown  parched  and  yellow,  the  landscape  hideous  and 
bare.  And  along  with  the  thickening  smoke  they  began 
to  notice  another  circumstance,  a  strange,  pungent  odor. 
They  were  not  sure  that  it  was  unpleasant,  this  odor ; 
some  might  have  called  it  sickening,  but  their  taste  in 
odors  was  not  developed,  and  they  were  only  sure  that  it 
was  curious.  Now,  sitting  in  the  trolley  car,  they  real¬ 
ized  that  they  were  on  their  way  to  the  home  of  it  — 
that  they  had  travelled  all  the  way  from  Lithuania  to  it. 
It  was  now,  no  longer  something  far-off  and  faint,  that  you 
caught  in  whiffs  ;  you  could  literally  taste  it,  as  well  as 
smell  it  —  you  could  take  hold  of  it,  almost,  and  examine 
it  at  jmur  ’eisure.  They  were  divided  in  their  opinions 
about  it.  It  was  an  elemental  odoi’,  raw  and  crude  ;  it 
was  rich,  almost  rancid,  sensual,  and  strong.  There  were 
some  who  drank  it  in  as  if  it  were  an  intoxicant ;  there 
were  others  who  put  their  handkerchiefs  to  their  faces. 
The  new  emigrants  were  still  tasting  it,  lost  in  wonder, 
when  suddenly  the  car  came  to  a  halt,  and  the  door  was 
flung  open,  and  a  voice  shouted  —  “  Stockyardsl  ” 

They  were  left  standing  upon  the  corner,  staring  ;  down 
a  side  street  there  were  two  rows  of  brick  houses,  and  be¬ 
tween  them  a  vista;  half  a  dozen  chimneys,  tall  as  the 
tallest  of  buildings,  touching  the  very  sky  —  and  leaping 
from  them  half  a  dozen  columns  of  smoke,  thick,  oily, 
and  black  as  night.  It  might  have  come  from  the  centre 
of  the  world,  this  smoke,  where  the  fires  of  the  ages  still 
smoulder.  It  came  as  if  self-impelled,  driving  all  before 
it,  a  perpetual  explosion.  It  was  inexhaustible ;  one 
stared,  waiting  to  see  it  stop,  but  still  the  great  streams 
rolled  out.  They  spread  in  vast  clouds  overhead,  writh¬ 
ing,  curling ;  then,  uniting  in  one  giant  river,  they 
streamed  away  down  the  sky,  stretching  a  black  pall  as 
far  as  the  eye  could  reach. 


THE  JUNGLE 


?9 

Then  the  party  became  aware  of  another  strange  thing. 
This,  too,  like  the  odor,  was  a  thing  elemental;  it  was  a 
sound,  a  sound  made  up  of  ten  thousand  little  sounds. 
You  scarcely  noticed  it  at  first  —  it  sunk  into  your  con¬ 
sciousness,  a  vague  disturbance,  a  trouble.  It  was  like 
the  murmuring  of  the  bees  in  the  spring,  the  whisperings 
of  the  forest  ;  it  suggested  endless  activity,  the  rumblings 
of  a  world  in  motion.  It  was  only  by  an  effort  that  one 
could  realize  that  it  was  made  b_y  animals,  that  it  was  the 
distant  lowing  of  ten  thousand  cattle,  the  distant  grunting 
of  ten  thousand  swine. 

They  would  have  liked  to  follow  it  up,  but,  alas,  they 
had  no  time  for  adventures  just  then.  The  policeman  on 
the  corner  was  beginning  to  watch  them;  and  so,  as  usual, 
they  started  up  the  street.  Scarcely  had  they  gone  a 
block,  however,  before  Jonas  was  heard  to  give  a  cry,  and 
began  pointing  excitedly  across  the  street.  Before  they 
could  gather  the  meaning  of  his  breathless  ejaculations  he 
had  bounded  away,  and  tliey  saw  him  enter  a  shop,  over 
which  was  a  sign  :  “  J.  Szedvilas,  Delicatessen.”  When 
he  came  out  again  it  was  in  company  with  a  very  stout 
gentleman  in  shirt  sleeves  and  an  apron,  clasping  Jonas 
by  both  hands  and  laughing  hilariously.  Then  Teta 
Elzbieta  recollected  suddenly  that  Szedvilas  had  been  the 
name  of  the  mytJiical  friend  who  had  made  his  fortune  in 
America.  To  find  that  he  had  been  making  it  in  the  deli* 
catessen  business  was  an  extraordinary  piece  of  good  for* 
tune  at  this  juncture  ;  though  it  was  well  on  in  the 
morning,  they  had  not  breakfasted,  and  the  children  were 
beginning  to  whimper. 

Thus  was  the  happy  ending  of  a  woful  voyage.  The 
two  families  literally  fell  upon  each  other’s  necks  —  for  it 
had  been  years  since  Jokubas  Szedvilas  had  met  a  man 
from  his  part  of  Lithuania.  Before  half  the  day  they  were 
lifelong  friends.  Jokubas  understood  all  the  pitfalls  of 
this  new  world,  and  could  explain  all  of  its  mysteries; 
he  could  tell  them  the  things  they  ought  to  have  done  in 
the  different  emergencies  — and  what  was  still  more  to  the 
point,  he  could  tell  them  what  to  do  now.  He  would 


30 


THE  JUNGLE 


take  them  to  poni  Aniele,  who  kept  a  boarding-house  the 
other  side  of  the  yards;  old  Mrs.  Jukniene,  he  explained, 
had  not  what  one  would  call  choice  accommodations,  but 
they  might  do  for  the  moment.  To  this  Teta  Elzbieta 
hastened  to  respond  that  nothing  could  be  too  cheap  to 
suit  them  just  then;  for  they  were  quite  terrified  over  the 
sums  they  had  had  to  expend.  A  very  few  days  of  prac¬ 
tical  experience  in  this  land  of  high  wages  had  been  suffi¬ 
cient  to  make  clear  to  them  the  crnel  fact  that  it  was  also 
a  land  of  high  prices,  and  that  in  it  the  poor  man  was 
almost  as  poor  as  in  any  other  corner  of  the  earth  ;  and  so 
there  vanished  in  a  night  all  the  wonderful  dreams  of 
wealth  that  had  been  haunting  Jurgis.  What  had  made 
the  discovery  all  the  more  painful  was  that  they  were 
spending,  at  American  prices,  money  which  they  had 
earned  at  home  rates  of  wages — and  so  were  really  being 
cheated  by  the  world  !  The  last  two  days  they  had  all 
but  starved  themselves  —  it  made  them  quite  sick  to 
pay  the  prices  that  the  railroad  people  asked  them  for 
food. 

Yet,  when  they  saw  the  home  of  the  Widow  Jukniene 
they  could  not  but  recoil,  even  so.  In  all  their  journey 
they  had  seen  nothing  so  bad  as  this.  Poni  Aniele  had  a 
four-room  flat  in  one  of  that  wilderness  of  two-story  frame 
tenements  that  lie  “back  of  the  yards.”  There  were  four 
such  flats  in  each  building,  and  each  of  the  four  was  a 
“boarding-house  ”  for  the  occupancj^  of  foreigners  —  Lith¬ 
uanians,  Poles,  Slovaks,  or  Bohemians.  Some  of  these 
places  were  kept  by  private  persons,  some  were  coopera¬ 
tive.  fl’liere  would  be  an  average  of  half  a  dozen  boarders 
to  each  room  —  sometimes  there  were  thirteen  or  fourteen 
to  one  room,  fifty  or  sixty  to  a  flat.  Each  one  of  the  oc¬ 
cupants  furnished  his  own  accommodations  —  that  is,  a 
mattress  and  some  bedding.  The  mattresses  would  be 
spread  upon  the  floor  in  rows  —  and  there  would  be 
nothing  else  in  the  place  except  a  stove^  It  was  by  no 
means  unusual  for  two  men  to  own  the  same  mattress  in 
common,  one  working  by  day  and  using  it  by  night,  and 
the  other  working  at  night  and  usinsr  it  in  the  daytime. 


THE  JUNGLE 


31 


Very  frequently  a  lodging-house  keeper  would  rent  the 
same  beds  to  double  shifts  of  men.  , 

Mrs.  Jukniene  was  a  wizened  up  little  woman,  with  a 
wrinkled  face.  Her  home  was  unthinkably  filthy ;  you 
could  not  enter  by  the  front  door  at  all,  owing  to  the 
mattresses,  and  when  you  tried  to  go  up  the  backstairs 
you  found  that  she  had  walled  up  most  of  the  porch  with 
old  boards  to  make  a  place  to  keep  her  chickens.  It  was 
a  standing  jest  of  the  boarders  that  Aniele  cleaned  house 
by  letting  the  chickens  loose  in  the  rooms.  Undoubtedly 
this  did  keep  down  the  vermin,  but  it  seemed  probable,  in 
view  of  all  the  circumstances,  that  the  old  lady  regarded 
it  rather  as  feeding  the  chickens  than  as  cleaning  the 
rooms.  The  truth  was  that  she  had  definitely  given  up 
the  idea  of  cleaning  anything,  under  pressure  of  an  attack 
of  rheumatism,  which  had  kept  her  doubled  up  in  one 
corner  of  her  room  for  over  a  week ;  during  which  time 
eleven  of  her  boarders,  heavily  in  her  debt,  had  concluded 
to  try  their  chances  of  employment  in  Kansas  City.  This 
was  July,  and  the  fields  were  green.  One  never  saw  the 
fields,  nor  any  green  thing  whatever,  in  Packingtown;  but 
one  could  go  out  on  the  road  and  “  hobo  it,”  as  the  men 
phrased  it,  and  see  the  country,  and  have  a  long  rest,  and 
an  easy  time  riding  on  the  freight-cars. 

Such  was  the  home  to  wdiich  the  new  arrivals  were  wel 
corned.  There  was  nothing  better  to  be  had  —  they  might 
not  do  so  well  by  looking  further,  for  Mrs.  Jukniene  had 
at  least  kept  one  room  for  herself  and  her  three  little  chil¬ 
dren,  and  now  offered  to  share  this  with  the  women  and 
the  girls  of  the  party.  They  could  get  bedding  at  a 
second-hand  store,  she  explained ;  and  they  would  not 
need  any,  while  the  weather  was  so  hot  —  doubtless  they 
would  all  sleep  on  the  sidewalk  such  nights  as  this,  as  did 
nearly  all  of  her  guests.  “  To-morrow,”  Jurgis  said,  when 
they  were  left  alone,  “  to-morrow  I  will  get  a  job,  and 
perhaps  Jonas  will  get  one  also;  and  then  we  can  get 
a  place  of  our  own.” 

Later  that  afternoon  he  and  Ona  went  out  to  take  a 


32 


THE  JUNGLE 


walk  and  look  about  them,  to  see  more  of  this  district 
which  was  to  be  their  home.  In  back  of  the  yards  the 
dreary  two-story  frame  houses  were  scattered  farther 
apart,  and  there  were  great  spaces  bare  —  that  seemingly 
had  been  overlooked  by  the  great  sore  of  a  city  as  it 
spread  itself  over  the  surface  of  the  prairie.  These  bare 
places  were  grown  up  with  dingy,  yellow  weeds,  hiding 
innumerable  tomato-cans;  innumerable  children  played 
upon  them,  chasing  one  another  here  and  there,  scream¬ 
ing  and  fighting.  The  most  uncanny  thing  about  this 
neighborhood  was  the  number  of  the  chddren;  you 
thought  there  must  be  a  school  just  out,  and  it  was  only 
after  long  acquaintance  that  you  v^^ere  able  to  realiKe  that 
there  was  no  school,  but  that  these  were  the  children  of 
the  neighborhood  —  that  there  were  so  many  children  to 
the  block  in  Packingtown  that  nowhere  on  its  streets 
could  a  horse  and  buggy  move  faster  than  a  walk  I 

It  could  not  move  faster  anyhow,  on  account  of  the 
state  of  the  streets-  Those  through  which  Jurgis  and 
Ona  were  walking  resembled  streets  less  than  they  did 
a  miniature  topographical  map.  The  roadway  was  com¬ 
monly  several  feet  lower  than  the  level  of  the  houses, 
which  were  sometimes  joined  by  high  board  walks ;  there 
were  no  pavements  —  there  were  mountains  and  valleys 
and  rivers,  gullies  and  ditches,  and  great  hollows  full  of 
stinking  green  water.  In  these  pools  the  children  played, 
and  rolled  about  in  the  mud  of  the  streets ;  here  and  there 
one  noticed  them  digging  in  it,  after  trophies  which  they 
had  stumbled  on.  One  wondered  about  this,  as  also 
about  the  swarms  of  flies  which  hung  about  the  scene, 
literally  blackening  the  air,  and  the  strange,  fetid  odor 
which  assailed  one’s  nostrils,  a  ghastly  odor,  of  all  the 
dead  things  of  the  universe.  It  impelled  the  visitor 
to  questions  —  and  then  the  residents  would  explain, 
quietly,  that  all  this  was  “made”  land,  and  that  it  had 
been  “made”  by  using  it  as  a  dumping-ground  for  the 
city  garbage.  After  a  few  years  the  unpleasant  effect  of 
this  would  pass  away,  it  was  said ;  but  meantime,  in  hot 
weather — and  especially  when  it  rained — the  flies  were 


THE  JUNGLE 


33 


apt  to  be  annoying.  Was  jt  not  unhealthful?  the  stranger 
would  ask ,  and  the  residents  would  answer,  “  Perhaps ; 
but  there  is  no  telling.” 

A  little  way  further  on,  and  Jurgis  and  Ona,  staring 
open-eyed  and  wondering,  came  to  the  place  where  this 
“  made  ”  ground  was  in  process  of  making.  Here  was  a 
great  hole,  perhaps  two  city  blocks  square,  and  vdth  long 
files  of  garbage  wagons  creeping  into  it.  The  place  had 
an  odor  for  which  there  are  no  polite  words ;  and  it  was 
sprinkled  over  with  children,  who  raked  in  it  from  dawn 
till  dark.  Sometimes  visitors  from  the  packing-houses 
would  wander  out  to  see  this  “dump,”  and  they  would 
stand  by  and  debate  as  to  whether  the  children  were  eat¬ 
ing  the  food  they  got,  or  merely  collecting  it  for  the 
chickens  at  home.  Apparently^  none  of  them  ever  went 
down  to  find  out. 

Beyond  this  dump  there  stood  a  great  brick-yard,  with 
smoking  chimneys.  First  they  took  out  the  soil  to  make 
bricks,  and  then  they  filled  it  up  again  with  garbage, 
which  seemed  to  Jurgis  and  Ona  a  felicitous  arrangement, 
characteristic  of  an  enterprising  country  like  America. 
A  little  way  beyond  was  another  great  hole,  which  they 
had  emptied  and  not  yet  filled  up.  This  held  water,  and 
all  summer  it  stood  there,  with  the  near-by  soil  draining 
into  it,  festering  and  stewing  in  the  sun  ;  and  then,  when 
winter  came,  somebodj'^  cut  the  ice  on  it,  and  sold  it  to  the 
people  of  the  city.  This,  too,  seemed  to  the  newcomers 
an  economical  arrangement ;  for  they  did  not  read  the 
newspapers,  and  their  heads  were  not  full  of  troublesome 
thoughts  about  “germs.” 

They  stood  there  while  the  sun  went  down  upon  this 
scene,  and  the  sky  in  the  west  turned  blood-red,  and  the 
tops  of  the  houses  shone  like  fire.  Jurgis  and  Ona  were 
not  thinking  of  the  sunset,  however  —  their  backs  were 
turned  to  it,  and  all  their  thoughts  were  of  Packingtown, 
which  they  could  see  so  plainly  in  the  distance.  The  line 
of  the  buildings  stood  clear-cut  and  black  against  the 
sky  ;  here  and  there  out  of  the  mass  rose  the  great  chiii 
nejs,  with  the  river  of  smoke  streaming  away  to  the  end 


34 


THE  JUNGLE 


of  the  world.  It  was  a  study  in  colors  now,  this  smoke  j 
in  the  sunset  light  it  was  black  and  brown  and  gray  and 
purple.  All  the  sordid  suggestions  of  the  place  were 
gone  —  in  the  twilight  it  was  a  vision  of  power.  To  the 
two  who  stood  watching  while  the  darkness  swallowed  it 
ap,  it  seemed  a  dream  of  wonder,  with  its  tale  of  human 
energy,  of  things  being  done,  of  employment  for  thou¬ 
sands  upon  thousands  of  men,  of  opportunity  and  free¬ 
dom,  of  life  and  love  and  joy.  When  they  came  away, 
arm  in  arm,  Jurgis  was  saying,  “To-morrow  1  shall  gc 
there  and  get  a  job  1  ” 


CHAPTER  III 


In  his  capacity  as  delicatessen  vender,  Jokubas  Szed- 
vilas  had  many  acquaintanees.  Among  these  was  one  of 
the  special  policemen  employed  by  Durham,  whose  duty 
it  frequently  was  to  pick  out  men  for  employment.  Joku¬ 
bas  had  never  tried  it,  but  he  expressed  a  certainty  that 
he  could  get  some  of  his  friends  a  job  through  this  man. 
It  was  agreed,  after  consultation,  that  he  should  make  the 
effort  with  old  Antanas  and  with  Jonas.  Jurgis  was  con¬ 
fident  of  his  ability  to  get  wmrk  for  himself,  unassisted  by 
any  one. 

As  we  have  said  before,  he  was  not  mistaken  in  this. 
He  had  gone  to  Brown’s  and  stood  there  not  more  than 
half  an  hour  before  one  of  the  bosses  noticed  his  form 
towering  above  the  rest,  and  signalled  to  him.  The  col¬ 
loquy  which  followed  was  brief  and  to  the  point :  — 

“  Speak  English  ?  ” 

“No;  Lit-uanian.”  (Jurgis  had  studied  this  word 
carefully.) 

“Job?” 

“Je.”  (A  nod.) 

“  Worked  here  before  ?  ” 

“No  ’stand.” 

(Signals  and  gesticulations  on  the  part  of  the  boss- 
iT'igorous  shakes  of  the  head  by  Jurgis.) 

“  Shovel  guts  ?  ” 

“No  ’stand.”  (More  shakes  of  the  head.) 

“Zarnos.  Pagaiksztis.  Szluota!”  (Imitative  motions.) 

“  Je.” 

“  See  door.  Durys?”  (Pointing.) 

“  Je.” 


36 


THE  JUNGLE 


“To-morrow,  seven  o’clock.  Understand?  Rytoj  t 
Prieszpietys!  Septyni  !  ” 

“Dekui,  tamistai  I  ”  (Thank  you,  sir.)  And  that  was 
all.  -^urgis  turned  away,  and  then  in  a  sudden  rush  the 
full  realization  of  his  triumph  swept  over  him,  and  he 
gave  a  yell  and  a  jump,  and  started  off  on  a  run.  He  had 
a  job !  He  had  a  job  !  And  he  went  all  the  way  home 
as  if  upon  wings,  and  burst  into  the  house  like  a  cyclone, 
to  the  rage  of  the  numerous  lodgers  who  had  just  turned 
in  for  their  daily  sleep. 

Meantime  Jokubas  had  been  to  see  his  friend  the  police¬ 
man,  and  received  encouragement,  so  it  was  a  happy  party. 
There  being  no  more  to  be  done  that  day,  the  shop  was 
left  under  the  care  of  Lucija,  and  her  husband  sallied 
forth  to  show  his  friends  the  sights  of  Packingtown. 
Jokubas  did  this  with  the  air  of  a  country  gentleman 
escorting  a  party  of  visitors  over  his  estate  ;  he  was  an 
old-time  resident,  and  all  these  wonders  had  grown  up 
under  his  eyes,  and  he  had  a  personal  pride  in  them. 
The  packers  might  own  the  land,  but  he  claimed  the  land¬ 
scape,  and  there  was  no  one  to  say  nay  to  this. 

They  passed  down  the  busj^  street  that  led  to  the  yards. 
It  was  still  early  morning,  and  everything  was  at  its  high 
tide  of  activity.  A  steady  stream  of  employees  was  pour¬ 
ing  through  the  gate  —  employees  of  the  higher  sort,  at 
this  hour,  clerks  and  stenographers  and  such.  For  the 
women  there  were  waiting  big  two-horse  wagons,  which 
set  off  at  a  gallop  as  fast  as  they  were  filled.  In  the  dis¬ 
tance  there  was  heard  again  the  lowing  of  the  cattle,  a 
sound  as  of  a  far-off  ocean  calling.  They  followed  it, 
this  time,  as  eager  as  children  in  sight  of  a  circus  mena¬ 
gerie —  which,  indeed,  the  scene  a  good  deal  resembled. 
They  crossed  the  railroad  tracks,  and  then  on  each  side 
of  the  street  were  the  pens  full  of  cattle  ;  they  would 
have  stopped  to  look,  but  Jokubas  hurried  them  on,  to 
where  there  was  a  stairway  and  a  raised  gallery,  from 
which  everything  could  be  seen.  Here  they  stood,  star¬ 
ing,  breathless  with  wonder. 


THE  JUNGLE 


37 


There  is  over  a  square  mile  of  space  in  the  yards,  and 
more  than  half  of  it  is  occupied  by  cattle-pens ;  north  and 
south  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach  there  stretches  a  sea  of 
pens.  And  they  were  all  filled  —  so  many  cattle  no  one 
had  ever  dreamed  existed  in  the  world.  Red  cattle,  black, 
white,  and  yellow  cattle ;  old  cattle  and  young  cattle ;  great 
bellowing  bulls  and  little  calves  not  an  hour  born ;  meek¬ 
eyed  milch  cows  and  fierce,  long-horned  Texas  steers.  The 
sound  of  them  here  was  as  of  all  the  barnyards  of  the  uni¬ 
verse  ;  and  as  for  counting  them  —  it  would  have  taken  all 
day  simply  to  count  the  pens.  Here  and  there  ran  long 
alleys,  blocked  at  intervals  by  gates;  and  Jokubas  told 
them  that  the  number  of  these  gates  was  twenty-five  thou¬ 
sand.  Jokubas  had  recently  been  reading  a  newspaper 
article  which  was  full  of  statistics  such  as  that,  and  he 
was  very  proud  as  he  repeated  them  and  made  his  guests 
cry  out  with  wonder.  Jurgis  too  had  a  little  of  this  sense 
of  pride.  Had  he  not  just  gotten  a  job,  and  become  a 
sharer  in  all  this  activity,  a  cog  in  this  marvellous  machine? 

Here  and  there  about  the  alleys  galloped  men  upon 
horseback,  booted,  and  carrying  long  whips ;  they  were 
very  busy,  calling  to  each  other,  and  to  those  who  v/ere 
driving  the  cattle.  They  were  drovers  and  stock-raisers, 
who  had  come  from  far  states,  and  brokers  and  commission- 
merchants,  and  buyers  for  all  the  big  packing-houses. 
Here  and  there  they  would  stop  to  inspect  a  bunch  of 
cattle,  and  there  would  be  a  parley,  brief  and  business¬ 
like.  The  buyer  would  nod  or  drop  his  whip,  and  that 
would  mean  a  bargain  ;  and  he  would  note  it  in  his  little 
book,  along  with  hundreds  of  others  he  had  made  that 
morning.  Then  Jokubas  pointed  out  the  place  where  the 
cattle  were  driven  to  be  weighed,  upon  a  great  scale  that 
would  weigh  a  hundred  thousand  pounds  at  once  and 
record  it  automatically.  It  was  near  to  the  east  entrance 
that  they  stood,  and  all  along  this  east  side  of  the  yards 
ran  the  railroad  tracks,  into  which  the  cars  were  run, 
loaded  with  cattle.  All  night  long  this  had  been  going 
on,  and  now  the  pens  were  full ;  by  to-night  they  would 
all  be  empty^,  and  the  same  thing  would  be  done  again. 


38 


THE  JUNGLE 


“  And  what  will  become  of  all  these  creatures  ?  ”  cried 
Teta  Elzbieta. 

“  By  to-night,”  Jokubas  answered,  “  they  will  all  be  killed 
and  cut  up ;  and  over  there  on  the  other  side  of  the  pack¬ 
ing-houses  are  more  railroad  tracks,  where  the  cars  come 
to  take  them  away.” 

There  were  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles  of  track  within 
the  yards,  their  guide  went  on  to  tell  them.  They  brought 
about  ten  thousand  head  of  cattle  every  day,  and  as  many 
hogs,  and  half  as  many  sheep  —  which  meant  some  eight 
or  ten  million  live  creatures  turned  into  food  every  year. 
One  stood  and  watched,  and  little  bj'’  little  caught  tlie  drift 
of  the  tide,  as  it  set  in  the  direction  of  the  packing-houses. 
There  were  groups  of  cattle  being  driven  to  the  chutes, 
which  were  roadways  about  fifteen  feet  wide,  raised  high 
above  the  pens.  In  these  chutes  the  stream  of  animals 
was  continuous;  it  was  quite  uncanny  to  watch  them, 
pressing  on  to  their  fate,  all  unsuspicious  —  a  very  river 
of  death.  Our  friends  were  not  poetical,  and  the  sight 
suggested  to  them  no  metaphors  of  human  destiny ;  they 
thought  only  of  the  wonderful  efficiency  of  it  ail.  The 
chutes  into  which  the  hogs  went  climbed  high  up  —  to 
the  very  top  of  the  distant  buildings;  and  Jokubas  ex¬ 
plained  that  the  hogs  went  up  by  the  power  of  their  own 
legs,  and  then  their  weight  carried  them  back  through  all 
the  processes  necessary  to  make  them  into  pork. 

“  They  don’t  waste  anything  here,”  said  the  guide,  and 
then  he  laughed  and  added  a  witticism,  which  ho  was 
pleased  that  his  unsophisticated  friends  should  take  to 
be  his  own  :  “  They  use  everything  about  the  hog  except 
the  squeal.”  In  front  of  Brown’s  General  Office  building 
there  grows  a  tiny  plot  of  grass,  and  this,  you  may  learn, 
is  the  only  bit  of  green  thing  in  Packingtown ;  likewise 
this  jest  about  the  hog  and  his  squeal,  the  stock  in  trade 
of  all  the  guides,  is  the  one  gleam  of  humor  that  you  will 
find  there. 

After  they  had  seen  enoiigh  of  the  pens,  the  party  went 
up  the  street,  to  the  mass  of  buildings  which  occupy  the 
centre  of  the  yards.  These  buildings,  made  of  brick  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


39 


stained  with  innumerable  layers  of  Packingtown  smoke, 
were  painted  all  over  with  advertising  signs,  from  which 
the  visitor  realized  suddenly  that  he  had  come  to  the  home 
of  many  of  the  torments  of  his  life.  It  was  here  that  they 
made  those  products  with  the  wonders  of  which  they  pes¬ 
tered  him  so  —  by  placards  that  defaced  the  landscape 
when  he  travelled,  and  by  staring  advertisements  in  the 
newspapers  and  magazines  —  by  silly  little  jingles  that 
he  could  not  get  out  of  his  mind,  and  gaudy  pictures 
that  lurked  for  him  around  every  street  corner.  Here 
was  where  they  made  Brown’s  Imperial  Hams  and  Bacon, 
Brown’s  Dressed  Beef,  Brown’s  Excelsior  Sausages  !  Here 
was  the  headquarters  of  Durham’s  Pure  Leaf  Lard,  of 
Durham’s  Breakfast  Bacon,  Durham’s  Canned  Beef,  Potted 
Ham,  Devilled  Chicken,  Peerless  Fertilizer  I 

Entering  one  of  the  Durham  buildings,  they  found  a 
number  of  other  visitors  waiting  ;  and  before  long  there 
came  a  guide,  to  escort  them  through  the  place.  They 
make  a  great  featui-e  of  showing  strangers  through  the 
packing-plants,  for  it  is  a  good  advertisement.  But 
ponas  Jokubas  whispered  maliciously  that  the  visitors  did 
not  see  an}'-  more  than  the  packers  wanted  them  to. 

They  climbed  a  long  series  of  stairways  outside  of  the 
building,  to  the  top  of  its  five  or  six  stories.  Here  were 
the  chute,  with  its  river  of  hogs,  all  patiently  toiling 
upward ;  there  was  a  place  for  them  to  rest  to  cool  off, 
and  then  through  another  passageway  they  went  into  a 
room  from  which  there  is  no  returning  for  hogs. 

It  was  a  long,  narrow  room,  with  a  gallery  along  it  for 
visitors.  At  the  head  there  was  a  great  iron  wheel,  about 
twenty  feet  in  circumference,  with  rings  here  and  there 
along  its  edge.  Upon  both  sides  of  this  wheel  there  was 
a  narrow  space,  into  which  came  the  hogs  at  the  end  of 
their  journey  ;  in  the  midst  of  them  stood  a  great  burly 
negro,  bare-armed  and  bare-chested.  He  was  resting  for 
the  moment,  for  the  wheel  had  stopped  while  men  were 
cleaning  up.  In  a  minute  or  two,  however,  it  began 
slowly  to  revolve,  and  then  the  men  upon  each  side  of  it 
sprang  to  work.  They  had  chains  which  they  fastened 


40 


THE  JUNGLE 


about  the  leg  of  the  nearest  hog,  and  the  other  end  of  the 
chain  they  hooked  into  one  of  the  rings  upon  the  wheel. 
So,  as  the  wheel  turned,  a  hog  was  suddenly  jerked  off  his 
feet  and  borne  aloft. 

At  the  same  instant  the  ear  was  assailed  by  a  most 
terrifying  shriek  ;  the  visitors  started  in  alarm,  the  women 
turned  pale  and  shrank  back.  The  shriek  was  followed 
by  another,  louder  and  yet  more  agonizing  —  for  once 
started  upon  that  journey,  the  hog  never  came  back  ;  at 
the  top  of  the  wheel  he  was  shunted  off  upon  a  trolley, 
and  went  sailing  down  the  room.  And  meantime  another 
was  swung  up,  and  then  another,  and  another,  until 
there  was  a  double  line  of  them,  each  dangling  by  a  foot 
and  kicking  in  frenzy  —  and  squealing.  The  uproar  was 
appalling,  perilous  to  the  ear-drums  ;  one  feared  there  was 
too  much  sound  for  the  room  to  hold  —  that  the  walls 
must  give  way  or  the  ceiling  crack.  There  were  high 
squeals  and  low  squeals,  grunts,  and  wails  of  agony  j 
there  would  come  a  momentary  lull,  and  then  a  fresh  out¬ 
burst,  louder  than  ever,  surging  up  to  a  deafening  climax. 
It  was  too  much  for  some  of  the  vistors  —  the  men  would 
look  at  each  other,  laughing  nervously,  and  the  women 
would  stand  with  hands  clenched,  and  the  blood  rushing 
to  their  faces,  and  the  tears  starting  in  their  eyes. 

Meantime,  heedless  of  all  these  things,  the  men  upon  the 
floor  were  going  about  their  work.  Neither  squeals  of 
hogs  nor  tears  of  visitors  made  any  difference  to  them  ; 
one  by  one  they  hooked  up  the  hogs,  and  one  by  one  with 
a  swift  stroke  they  slit  their  throats.  There  was  a  long 
line  of  hogs,  with  squeals  and  life-blood  ebbing  away  to¬ 
gether  ;  until  at  last  each  started  again,  and  vanished 
with  a  splash  into  a  huge  vat  of  boiling  water. 

It  was  all  so  very  businesslike  that  one  watched  it 
fascinated.  It  was  pork-making  by  machinery,  pork¬ 
making  by  applied  mathematics.  And  yet  somehow  the 
most  matter-of-fact  person  could  not  help  thinking  of  the 
hogs  ;  they  were  so  innocent,  they  came  so  very  trust¬ 
ingly  ;  and  they  were  so  very  human  in  their  protests  — 
and  so  perfectly  within  their  rights  I  Tney  had  done 


THE  JUNGLE 


41 


nothing  to  deserve  it ;  and  it  was  adding  insult  to  injury, 
as  the  thing  was  done  here,  swinging  them  up  in  this 
cold-blooded,  impersonal  way,  without  a  pretence  at 
apology,  without  the  homage  of  a  tear.  Now  and  then  a 
visitor  wept,  to  be  sure  ;  but  this  slaughtering-machine 
ran  on,  visitors  or  no  visitors.  It  was  like  some  horrible 
crime  committed  in  a  dungeon,  all  unseen  and  unheeded, 
buried  out  of  sight  and  of  memory. 

One  could  not  stand  and  watch  very  long  without  be« 
coming  philosophical,  without  beginning  to  deal  in  symbols 
and  similes,  and  to  hear  the  hog-squeal  of  the  universe. 
Was  it  permitted  to  believe  that  there  was  nowhere  upon 
the  earth,  or  above  the  earth,  a  heaven  for  hogs,  where 
they  were  requited  for  all  this  suffering  ?  Each  one  of 
these  hogs  was  a  separate  creature.  Some  were  white  hogs, 
some  were  black  ;  some  were  brown,  some  were  spotted  ; 
some  were  old,  some  were  young ;  some  were  long  and 
lean,  some  were  monstrous.  And  each  of  them  had  an 
individuality  of  his  own,  a  will  of  his  own,  a  hope  and  a 
heart’s  desire  ;  each  was  full  of  self-confidence,  of  self- 
importance,  and  a  sense  of  dignity.  And  trusting  and 
strong  in  faith  he  had  gone  about  his  business,  the  while 
a  black  shadow  hung  over  him  and  a  horrid  Fate  waited 
in  his  pathway.  Now  suddenly  it  had  swooped  upon 
him,  and  had  seized  him  by  the  leg.  Relentless,  remorse¬ 
less,  it  was  ;  all  his  protests,  his  screams,  were  nothing  to 
it  —  it  did  its  cruel  will  with  him,  as  if  his  wishes,  his 
feelings,  had  simply  no  existence  at  all ;  it  cut  his  throat 
and  watched  him  gasp  out  his  life.  And  now  was  one 
to  believe  that  there  was  nowliere  a  god  of  hogs,  to  whom 
this  hog-personaiity  was  precious,  to  whom  these  hog- 
squeals  and  agonies  had  a  meaning  ?  Who  would  take 
this  hog  into  his  arms  and  comfort  him,  reward  him 
for  his  work  well  done,  and  show  him  the  meaning  of  his 
sacrifice  ?  Perhaps  some  glimpse  of  all  this  was  in  the 
thoughts  of  our  humble-minded  Jurgis,  as  he  turned  to  go 
on  with  the  rest  of  the  party,  and  muttered  :  “  Dieve  — 
but  I’m  glad  I’m  not  a  hog  !  ” 

Che  carcass  hog  was  scooped  out  of  the  vat  by  machin* 


4 


42 


THE  JUNGLE 


ery,  and  then  it  fell  to  the  second  floor,  passing  on  the 
way  through  a  wonderful  machine  with  numerous  scrapers, 
which  adjusted  themselves  to  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
animal,  and  sent  it  out  at  the  other  end  with  nearly  all  of 
its  bristles  removed.  It  was  then  again  strung  up  by 
machinery,  and  sent  upon  another  trolley  ride;  this  time 
passing  between  two  lines  of  men,  who  sat  upon  a  raised 
platform,  each  doing  a  certain  single  thing  to  the  carcass 
as  it  came  to  him.  One  scraped  the  outside  of  a  leg; 
another  scraped  the  inside  of  the  same  leg.  One  Avith  a 
swift  stroke  cut  the  throat ;  another  with  two  swift  strokes 
severed  the  head,  which  fell  to  the  floor  and  vanished 
through  a  hole.  Another  made  a  slit  down  the  body ;  a 
second  opened  the  body  wider ;  a  third  with  a  saw  cut  the 
breast-bone  ;  a  fourth  loosened  the  entrails ;  a  fifth  pulled 
them  out  —  and  they  also  slid  through  a  hole  in  the  floor. 
There  were  men  to  scrape  each  side  and  men  to  scrape  the 
back  ;  there  were  men  to  clean  the  carcass  inside,  to  trim 
it  and  wash  it.  Looking  down  this  room,  one  saw,  creep¬ 
ing  slowly,  a  line  of  dangling  hogs  a  hundred  yards  in 
length ;  and  for  every  yard  there  was  a  man,  working  as 
if  a  demon  were  after  him.  At  the  end  of  this  hog’s  prog¬ 
ress  every  inch  of  the  carcass  had  been  gone  over  several 
times ;  and  then  it  was  rolled  into  the  chilling-room,  where 
it  stajmd  for  twenty-four  hours,  and  where  a  stranger 
might  lose  himself  in  a  forest  of  freezing  hogs. 

Before  the  carcass  was  admitted  here,  however,  it  had  to 
pass  a  government  inspector,  who  sat  in  the  doorway  and 
felt  of  the  glands  in  the  neck  for  tuberculosis.  This 
government  inspector  did  not  have  the  manner  of  a  man 
who  was  worked  to  death ;  he  was  apparently  not  haunted 
by  a  fear  that  the  hog  might  get  by  him  before  he  had 
finished  his  testing.  If  you  were  a  sociable  person,  he  was 
quite  willing  to  enter  into  conversation  with  you,  and 
to  explain  to  you  the  deadly  natui-e  of  the  ptomaines  which 
are  found  in  tubercular  pork  ;  and  while  he  was  talking  , 
with  you  you  could  hardly  be  so  ungrateful  as  to  no- 

I  tice  that  a  dozen  carcasses  were  passing  him  untouched. 

'  This  inspector  wore  an  imposing  silver  badge,  and  he 


THE  JUNGLE 


43 


gave  an  atmosphere  of  authority  to  the  scene,  and,  as  it 
vrere,  put  the  stamp  of  official  approval  upon  the  things 
v^hich  were  done  in  Durham’s. 

Jurgis  went  down  the  line  with  the  rest  of  the  visitors, 
staring  open-mouthed,  lost  in  wonder.  He  had  dressed 
hogs  himself  in  the  forest  of  Lithuania ;  but  he  had  never 
expected  to  live  to  see  one  hog  dressed  by  several  hundred 
men.  It  was  like  a  wonderful  poem  to  him,  and  he  took  it 
all  in  guilelessly  —  even  to  the  conspicuous  signs  demand¬ 
ing  immaculate  cleanliness  of  the  employees.  Jurgis  was 
vexed  when  the  cynical  Jokubas  translated  these  signs 
with  sarcastic  comments,  offering  to  take  them  to  the 
secret-rooms  where  the  spoiled  meats  went  to  be  doctored. 

The  party  descended  to  the  next  floor,  where  the  various 
waste  materials  were  treated.  Here  came  the  entrails,  to 
be  scraped  and  washed  clean  for  sausage-casings;  men 
and  women  worked  here  in  the  midst  of  a  sickening  stench, 
which  caused  the  visitors  to  hasten  by,  gasping.  To  another 
room  came  all  the  scraps  to  be  “tanked,”  which  meant 
boiling  and  pumping  off  the  grease  to  make  soap  and  lard; 
below  t  ley  took  out  the  refuse,  and  this,  too,  was  a  region 
in  which  the  visiters  did  not  linger.  In  still  other  places 
men  were  engaged  in  cutting  up  the  carcasses  that  had 
been  through  the  chilling-rooms.  First  there  were  the 
“  splitters,”  the  most  expert  workmen  in  the  plant,  who 
earned  as  high  as  fifty  cents  an  hour,  and  did  not  a  thing 
all  da}-  except  chop  hogs  down  the  middle.  Then  there 
v/ere  “cleaver  men,”  great  giants  with  muscles  of  iron; 
each  had  two  men  to  attend  him  —  to  slide  the  half  car¬ 
cass  in  front  of  him  on  the  table,  and  hold  it  while  he 
chopped  it,  and  then  turn  each  piece  so  that  he  might  chop 
it  once  more.  His  cleaver  had  a  blade  about  two  feet  long, 
and  he  never  made  but  one  cut;  he  made  it  so  neatly,  too, 
that  his  implement  did  not  smite  through  and  dull  itself  — 
there  was  just  enough  force  for  a  perfect  cut,  and  no 
more.  So  through  various  yawning  holes  there  slipped  to 
the  floor  below  —  to  one  room  hams,  to  another  fore¬ 
quarters,  to  another  sides  of  pork.  One  might  go  down 
to  this  floor  and  see  the  pickling-rooms,  where  the  hams 


44 


THE  JUNGLE 


■W'ere  put  into  vats,  and  the  great  smoke-rooms,  with  their 
air-tight  iron  doors.  In  other  rooms  they  prepared  salt- 
pork  —  there  were  whole  cellars  full  of  it,  built  up  in  great 
towers  to  the  ceiling.  In  yet  other  rooms  they  were  put¬ 
ting  up  meat  in  boxes  and  barrels,  and  wrapping  hams  and 
bacon  in  oiled  paper,  sealing  and  labelling  and  sewing 
them.  From  the  doors  of  these  rooms  went  men  with 
loaded  trucks,  to  the  platform  where  freight-cars  were 
waiting  to  be  filled  ;  and  one  went  out  there  and  realized 
with  a  start  that  he  had  come  at  last  to  the  ground  floor 
of  this  enormous  building. 

Then  the  party  went  across  the  street  to  where  they  did 
the  killing  of  beef  —  where  every  hour  they  turned  four 
or  five  hundred  cattle  into  meat.  Unlike  the  place  they 
had  left,  all  this  work  was  done  on  one  floor;  and  instead 
of  there  being  one  line  of  carcasses  which  moved  to  the 
workmen,  there  were  fifteen  or  twenty  lines,  and  the  men 
moved  from  one  to  another  of  these.  This  made  a  scene 
of  intense  activity,  a  picture  of  human  power  wonderful  to 
watch.  It  was  all  in  one  great  room,  like  a  circus  amphi¬ 
theatre,  with  a  gallery  for  visitors  running  over  the  '•entre. 

Along  one  side  of  the  room  ran  a  narrow  gallery,  a  few 
feet  from  the  floor;  into  which  gallery  the  cattle  were 
driven  by  men  with  goads  which  gave  them  electric  shocks. 
Once  crowded  in  here,  the  creatures  were  prisoned,  each 
in  a  separate  pen,  by  gates  that  shut,  leaving  them  no 
room  to  turn  around ;  and  while  they  stood  bellowing  and 
plunging,  over  the  top  of  the  pen  there  leaned  one  of  the 
“  knockers,'’  armed  with  a  sledge-hammer,  and  watching 
for  a  chance  to  deal  a  blow.  The  room  echoed  with  the 
thuds  in  quick  succession,  and  the  stamping  and  kicking 
of  the  steers.  The  instant  the  animal  had  fallen,  the 
“knocker”  passed  on  to  another;  while  a  second  man 
raised  a  lever,  and  the  side  of  the  pen  was  raised,  and  the 
animal,  still  kicking  and  struggling,  slid  out  to  the  “  kill¬ 
ing-bed.”  Here  a  man  put  shackles  about  one  leg,  and 
pressed  another  lever,  and  the  body  was  jerked  up  into  the 
air.  Thei’e  were  fifteen  or  twenty  such  pens,  and  it  was 
a  matter  of  only  a  couple  of  minutes  to  knock  fifteen  or 


THE  jraGLE 


45 


t/vventy  cattle  and  roll  them  out.  Then  once  more  the 
g;ates  were  opened,  and  another  lot  rushed  in ;  and  so  out 
cf  each  pen  there  rolled  a  steady  stream  of  carcasses, 
V/hich  the  men  upon  the  killing-beds  had  to  get  out  of  the 

ay. 

The  manner  in  which  they  did  this  was  something  to  be 
seen  and  never  forgotten.  They  worked  with  furious  in¬ 
tensity,  literally  upon  the  run  —  at  a  pace  with  which 
there  is  nothing  to  be  compared  except  a  football  game. 
It  was  ail  highly  specialized  labor,  each  man  having  his 
task  to  do ;  generally  this  would  consist  of  only  two  or  three 
specific  cuts,  and  he  would  pass  down  the  line  of  fifteen 
or  twenty  carcasses,  making  these  cuts  upon  each.  First 
there  came  the  “  butcher,”  to  bleed  them ;  this  meant  one 
swift  stroke,  so  swift  that  you  could  not  see  it  —  only  the 
flash  of  the  knife ;  and  before  you  could  realize  it,  the 
man  had  darted  on  to  the  next  line,  and  a  stream  of  bright 
red  was  pouring  out  upon  the  floor.  This  floor  was  half 
an  inch  deep  with  blood,  in  spite  of  the  best  efforts  of  men 
who  kept  shovelling  it  through  holes ;  it  must  have  made 
the  floor  slippery,  but  no  one  could  have  guessed  this  by 
watching  the  men  at  work. 

The  carcass  hung  for  a  few  minutes  to  bleed  ;  there  was 
no  time  lost,  however,  for  there  were  several  hanging  in 
each  line,  and  one  was  always  ready.  It  was  let  down  to 
the  ground,  and  there  came  the  “  headsman,”  whose  task 
it  was  to  sever  the  head,  with  two  or  three  swift  strokes. 
Then  came  the  “floorsman,”  to  make  the  first  cut  in  the 
skin ;  and  then  another  to  finish  ripping  the  skin  down 
the  centre ;  and  then  half  a  dozen  more  in  swift  succes¬ 
sion,  to  finish  the  skinning.  After  they  were  through,  the 
carcass  was  again  swung  up  ;  and  while  a  man  with  a  stick 
examined  the  skin,  to  make  sure  that  it  had  not  been  cut, 
and  another  rolled  it  up  and  tumbled  it  through  one  of 
the  inevitable  holes  in  the  floor,  the  beef  proceeded  on  its 
journey.  There  were  men  to  cut  it,  and  men  to  split  it, 
and  men  to  gut  it  and  scrape  it  clean  inside.  There  were 
some  with  hose  which  threw  jets  of  boiling  water  upon 
"t,  and  others  who  removed  the  feet  and  added  the  final 


46 


THE  JUNGLE 


touches.  In  the  end,  as  with  the  hogs,  the  finished  hee;f 
was  run  into  the  chilling-room,  to  hang  its  appointee,! 
time.  l' 

The  visitors  were  taken  there  and  shown  them,  all  neatlr 
hung  in  rows,  labelled  conspicuously  with  the  tags  of  thi'^s 
government  inspectors  —  and  some,  which,  had  been  killed 
by  a  special  process,  marked  with  the  sign  of  the  “  kosher” 
rabbi,  certifying  that  it  was  fit  for  sale  to  the  orthodox. 
And  then  the  visitors  were  taken  to  the  other  parts  of  the 
building,  to  see  what  became  of  each  particle  of  the  waste 
material  that  had  vanished  through  the  floor;  and  to  the 
pickling-rooms,  and  the  salting-rooms,  the  canning-rooms, 
and  the  packing-rooms,  where  choice  meat  was  prepared 
for  shipping  in  refrigerator-cars,  destined  to  be  eaten  in 
all  the  foiir  corners  of  civilization.  Afterward  they  went 
outside,  wandering  about  among  the  mazes  of  buildings  in 
which  was  done  the  work  auxiliary  to  this  great  industry. 
There  was  scarcely  a  thing  needed  in  the  business  that 
Durham  and  Company  did  not  make  for  themselves.  There 
was  a  great  steam-power  plant  and  an  electricity  plant. 
There  was  a  barrel  factory,  and  a  boiler-repair  shop.  There 
was  a  building  to  which  the  grease  was  piped,  and  made 
into  soap  and  lard ;  and  then  there  was  a  factory  for  mak¬ 
ing  lard  cans,  and  another  for  making  soap  boxes.  There 
was  a  building  in  which  the  bristles  were  cleaned  and  dried, 
for  the  making  of  hair  cushions  and  such  things ;  there  was 
a  building  where  the  skins  were  dried  and  tanned,  there 
was  another  where  heads  and  feet  were  made  into  glue, 
and  another  where  bones  were  made  into  fertilizer.  No 
tiniest  particle  of  organic  matter  was  wasted  in  Durham’s. 
Out  of  the  horns  of  the  cattle  they  made  combs,  buttons, 
hair-pins,  and  imitation  ivory ;  out  of  the  shin  bones  and 
other  big  bones  they  cut  knife  and  tooth-brush  handles, 
and  mouthpieces  for  pipes;  out  of  the  hoofs  they  cut 
hair-pins  and  buttons,  before  they  made  the  rest  into  glue. 
From  such  things  as  feet,  knuckles,  hide  clippings,  and 
sinews  came  such  strange  and  unlikely  products  as  gelatin, 
isinglass,  and  phosphorus,  bone-black,  shoe-blacking,  and 
bone-oil.  They  had  curled-hair  works  for  the  cattle  tails. 


THE  JUNGLE 


47 


and  a  “  wool-pullery  ”  for  the  sheep  skins ;  they  made  pep¬ 
sin  from  the  stomachs  of  the  pigs,  and  albumen  from  the 
blood,  and  violin  strings  from  the  ill-smelling  entrails. 
When  there  was  nothing  else  to  be  done  with  a  thing,  they 
first  put  it  into  a  tank  and  got  out  of  it  all  the  tallow  and 
grease,  and  then  they  made  it  into  fertilizer.  All  these 
industries  were  gathered  iiito  buildings  near  by,  connected 
by  galleries  and  railroads  with  the  main  establishment; 
and  it  was  estimated  that  they  had  handled  nearly  a. 
quarter  of  a  billion  of  animals  since  the  founding  of  the 
plant  by  the  elder  Durham  a  generation  and  more  ago. 
If  you  counted  with  it  the  other  big  plants  —  and  they 
were  now  really  all  one  —  it  was,  so  Jokubas  informed 
them,  the  greatest  aggregation  of  labor  and  capital  evei 
gathered  in  one  place.  It  employed  thirty  thousand  men.'* 
it  supported  directly  tv/o  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people  i 
in  its  neighborhood,  and  indirectly  it  supported  half  a  mil-  . 
lion.  It  sent  its  products  to  every  country  in  the  civilized 
world,  and  it  furnished  the  food  for  no  less  than  thirty 
million  people  I 

To  all  of  these  things  our  friends  would  listen  open 
mouthed  —  it  seemed  to  them  impossible  of  belief  thav 
anything  so  stupendous  could  have  been  devised  by 
mortal  man.  That  was  why  to  Jurgis  it  seemed  almost 
profanity  to  speak  about  the  place  as  did  Jokubas,  scepti¬ 
cally  ;  it  was  a  thing  as  tremendous  as  the  universe  —  the 
laws  and  ways  of  its  working  no  more  than  the  universe 
to  be  questioned  or  understood.  All  that  a  mere  man 
could  do,  it  seemed  to  Jurgis,  was  to  take  a  thing  like 
this  as  he  found  it,  and  do  as  he  was  told ;  to  be  given  a 
place  in  it  and  a  share  in  its  wonderful  activities  was  a 
blessing  to  be  grateful  for,  as  one  was  grateful  for  the 
sunshine  and  the  rain.  Jurgis  was  even  glad  that  he  had 
not  seen  the  place  before  meeting  with  his  triumph,  for 
he  felt  that  the  size  of  it  would  have  overwhelmed  him. 
But  now  he  had  been  admitted  —  he  was  a  part  of  it  all  ! 
He  had  the  feeling  that  this  whole  huge  establishment 
had  taken  him  under  its  protection,  and  had  become 
responsible  for  his  welfare.  So  guileless  was  he,  and 


48 


THE  JUNGLE 


ignorant  of  the  nature  of  business,  that  he  did  not  even 
realize  that  he  had  become  an  employee  of  Brown’s,  and 
that  Brown  and  Durham  were  supposed  by  all  the  world 
to  be  deadly  rivals  —  were  even  required  to  be  deadly 
rivals  by  the  law  of  the  land,  and  ordered  to  try  to  ruin 
each  other  under  penalty  of  fine  and  imprisonment  I 


CHAPTER  JV 


Promptly  at  seven  the  next  morning  Jurgis  reported 
for  work.  He  came  to  the  door  that  had  been  pointed 
out  to  him,  and  there  he  waited  for  nearly  two  hours. 
The  boss  had  meant  for  him  to  enter,  but  had  not  said 
this,  and  so  it  was  only  when  on  his  way  out  to  hire 
another  man  that  be  came  upon  Jurgis.  He  gave  him  a 
good  cursing,  but  as  Jurgis  did  not  understand  a  v,'ord  of 
it  he  did  not  object.  He  followed  the  boss,  who  showed 
him  where  to  put  his  street  clothes,  and  waited  while  he 
donned  the  working  clothes  he  had  bought  in  a  second¬ 
hand  shop  and  brought  with  him  in  a  bundle ;  then  he 
led  him  to  the  “killing-beds.”  The  work  which  Jurgis 
was  to  do  here  was  very  simple,  and  it  took  him  but  a 
few  minutes  to  learn  it.  He  was  provided  with  a  stiff 
besom,  such  as  is  used  by  street  sweepers,  and  it  was  his 
place  to  follov/  down  the  line  the  man  who  drew  out  the 
smoking  entrails  from  the  carcass  of  the  steer ;  this  mass 
was  to  be  swept  into  a  trap,  which  was  then  closed,  so 
that  no  one  might  slip  into  it.  As  Jurgis  came  in,  the 
first  cattle  of  the  morning  were  just  making  their  appear¬ 
ance;  and  so,  with  scarcely  time  to  look  about  him,  and 
none  to  speak  to  any  one,  he  fell  to  work.  It  was  a 
sweltering  day  in  July,  and  the  place  ran  with  steaming 
hot  blood  —  one  waded  in  it  on  the  floor.  The  stench 
was  almost  overpowering,  but  to  Jurgis  it  was  nothing. 
His  whole  soul  was  dancing  with  joy  —  he  was  at  work 
at  last  1  He  was  at  work  and  earning  money  I  All  day 
long  he  was  figuring  to  b’mself.  He  was  paid  the  fabu¬ 
lous  sum  of  seventeen  ana  a  half  cents  an  hour;  and  as 
it  proved  a  rush  day  and  he  worked  until  nearly  seven 
o’clock  in  the  evening,  he  went  home  to  the  family  with 


60 


THE  JUNGLE 


the  tidings  that  he  had  earned  more  than  a  dollar  and  a 
half  in  a  single  day  I 

At  home,  also,  there  was  more  good  news  ;  so  much  of 
it  at  once  that  there  was  quite  a  celebration  in  Aniele’s 
hall  bedroom.  Jonas  had  been  to  have  an  interview  with 
the  special  policeman  to  whom  Szedvilas  had  introduced 
him,  and  had  been  taken  to  see  several  of  the  bosses,  with 
the  result  that  one  had  promised  him  a  job  the  beginning 
of  the  next  week.  And  then  there  was  Marija  Bercz- 
ynskas,  who,  fired  with  jealousy  by  the  success  of  Jurgis, 
had  set  out  upon  her  own  responsibility  to  get  a  place. 
Marija  had  nothing  to  take  with  her  save  her  two  brawny 
arms  and  the  word  “job,”  laboriously  learned;  but  with 
these  she  had  marched  about  Packingtown  all  day,  enter¬ 
ing  every  door  where  there  were  signs  of  activity.  Out 
of  some  she  had  been  ordered  with  curses;  but  Marija 
was  not  afraid  of  man  or  devil,  and  asked  every  one  she 
saw  —  visitors  and  strangers,  or  work-people  like  herself, 
and  once  or  twice  even  high  and  lofty  office  personages, 
who  stared  at  her  as  if  they  thought  she  was  crazy.  In 
the  end,  however,  she  had  reaped  her  reward.  In  one  of 
the  smaller  plants  she  had  stumbled  upon  a  room  where 
scores  of  women  and  girls  were  sitting  at  long  tables  pre¬ 
paring  smoked  beef  in  cans ;  and  wandering  through  room 
after  room,  Marija  came  at  last  to  the  place  where  the 
sealed  cans  were  being  painted  and  labelled,  and  here  she 
had  the  good  fortune  to  encounter  the  “  forelady.”  Marija 
did  not  itnderstand  then,  as  she  was  destined  to  understand 
later,  what  there  was  attractive  to  a  “  forelady  ”  about  the 
combination  of  a  face  full  of  boundless  good  nature  and 
the  muscles  of  a  dray  horse ;  but  the  woman  had  told  her 
to  come  the  next  day  and  she  would  perhaps  give  her  a 
chance  to  learn  the  trade  of  painting  cans.  The  painting 
of  cans  being  skilled  piece  work,  and  paying  as  much  as 
two  dollars  a  day,  Marija  burst  in  upon  the  family  with 
the  yell  of  a  Comanche  Indian,  and  fell  to  capering  about 
the  room  so  as  to  frighten  the  baby  almost  into  convul¬ 
sions. 

Better  luck  than  all  this  could  hardly  have  been  hoped 


I'HE  JUNGLE 


51 


for;  there  was  only  one  of  them  left  to  seek  a  place. 
Jurgis  was  determined  that  Teta  Eizbieta  should  stay  at 
home  to  keep  house,  and  that  Ona  should  help  her.  He 
would  not  have  Ona  working  —  he  was  not  that  sort  of 
a  man,  he  said,  and  she  was  not  that  sort  of  a  woman.  It 
would  be  a  strange  thing  if  a  man  like  him  could  not  sup- 
port  the  family,  with  the  help  of  the  board  of  Jonas  and 
Marija.  He  would  not  even  hear  of  letting  the  children 
go  to  work  —  there  were  schools  here  in  America  for 
children,  Jurgis  had  heard,  to  which  they  could  go  for 
nothing.  That  the  priest  would  object  to  these  schools 
was  something  of  which  he  had  as  yet  no  idea,  and  for 
the  present  his  mind  was  made  up  that  the  children  of 
Teta  Eizbieta  should  have  as  fair  a  chance  as  any  other  chil¬ 
dren.  The  oldest  of  them,  little  Stanislovas,  was  but  thir¬ 
teen,  and  small  for  his  age  at  that;  and  while  the  oldest 
son  of  Szedvilas  was  only  twelve,  and  had  worked  for 
over  a  year  at  Jones’s,  Jurgis  would  have  it  that  Stani¬ 
slovas  should  learn  to  speak  English,  and  grow  up  to  be  a 
skilled  man. 

So  there  was  only  old  Dede  Antanas;  Jurgis  would 
have  had  him  rest  too,  but  he  was  forced  to  acknowledge 
that  this  was  not  possible,  and,  besides,  the  old  man  would 
not  hear  it  spoken  of  —  it  was  his  whim  to  insist  that  he 
was  as  lively  as  any  boy.  He  had  come  to  America  as 
full  of  hope  as  the  best  of  them ;  and  now  he  was  the 
chief  problem  that  worried  his  son.  For  every  one  that 
Jurgis  spoke  to  assured  him  that  it  was  a  waste  of  time 
to  seek  emjdoyment  for  the  old  man  in  Packingtown. 
Szedvilas  told  him  that  the  packers  did  not  even  keep  the 
men  who  had  grown  old  in  their  own  service  —  to  say 
nothing  of  taking  on  new  ones.  And  not  only  was  it  the 
rule  here,  it  was  the  rule  everywhere  in  America,  so  far 
as  he  knew.  To  satisfy  Jurgis  he  had  asked  the  police¬ 
man,  and  brought  back  the  message  that  the  thing  was 
not  to  be  thought  of.  They  had  not  told  this  to  old 
Anthony,  who  had  consequently  spent  the  two  days  wan¬ 
dering  about  from  one  part  of  the  3"ards  to  another,  and 
had  now  come  home  to  hear  about  the  triumph  of  tht 


52 


THE  JUNGLE 


others,  smiling  bravely  and  saying  that  it  would  be  his 
turn  another  day. 

Their  good  luck,  they  felt,  had  given  them  the  right  to 
think  about  a  home ;  and  sitting  out  on  the  doorstep  that 
summer  evening,  they  held  consultation  about  it,  and 
Jurgis  took  occasion  to  broach  a  weighty  subject.  Pass¬ 
ing  down  the  avenue  to  work  that  morning  he  had  seen 
two  boys  leaving  an  advertisement  from  house  to  house ; 
and  seeing  that  there  were  pictures  upon  it,  Jurgis  had 
asked  for  one,  and  had  rolled  it  up  and  tucked  it  into  his 
shirt.  At  noontime  a  man  with  whom  he  had  been  talk¬ 
ing  had  read  it  to  him  and  told  him  a  little  about  it,  with 
the  result  that  Jurgis  had  conceived  a  wild  idea. 

He  brought  out  the  placard,  which  was  quite  a  work  of 
art.  It  was  nearly  two  feet  long,  printed  on  calendered 
paper,  with  a  selection  of  colors  so  bright  that  they  shone 
even  in  the  moonlight.  The  centre  of  the  placard  was 
occupied  by  a  house,  brilliantly  painted,  new,  and  dazzling. 
The  roof  of  it  was  of  a  purple  hue,  and  trimmed  with 
gold;  the  house  itself  was  silvery,  and  the  doors  and 
windows  red.  It  was  a  two-story  building,  with  a  porch 
in  front,  and  a  very  fancy  scrollwork  around  the  edges; 
it  was  complete  in  every  tiniest  detail,  even  the  door¬ 
knob,  and  there  was  a  hammock  on  the  porch  and  white 
lace  curtains  in  the  windows.  Dnderneath  this,  in  one 
corner,  was  a  picture  of  a  husband  and  wife  in  loving 
embrace ;  in  the  opposite  corner  was  a  cradle,  with  fluffy 
curtains  drawn  over  it,  and  a  smiling  cherub  hovering 
upon  silver-colored  wings.  For  fear  that  the  significance 
of  all  this  should  be  lost,  there  was  a  label,  in  Polish, 
Lithuanian,  and  German  —  Dom.  Namai.  Heim." 
“  Why  pay  rent  ?  ”  the  linguistic  circular  went  on  to 
demand.  “Why  not  own  your  own  home?  Do  you 
know  that  you  can  buy  one  for  less  than  your  rent?  We 
have  built  thousands  of  homes  which  are  now  occupied 
by  happy  families.”-— So  it  became  eloquent,  picturing 
the  blissfulness  of  married  life  in  a  house  with  nothing  to 
pay.  It  even  quoted  “  Home,  Sweet  Home,”  and  made 
bold  to  translate  it  into  Polish — though  for  some  re‘!’<son 


THE  JUNGLE 


53 


it  omitted  the  Lithuanian  of  this.  Perhaps  the  translator 
found  it  a  difficult  matter  to  be  sentimental  in  a  language 
in  which  a  sob  is  known  as  a  “  gukcziojimas  ”  and  a  smile 
as  a  “  nusiszypsojimas.” 

Over  this  document  the  family  pored  long,  while  Ona 
spelled  out  its  contents.  It  appeared  that  this  house  con¬ 
tained  four  rooms,  besides  a  basement,  and  that  it  might 
be  bought  for  fifteen  hundred  dollars,  the  lot  and  all. 
Of  this,  only  three  hundred  dollars  had  to  be  paid  down, 
the  balance  being  paid  at  the  rate  of  twelve  dollars  a 
month.  These  were  frightful  sums,  but  then  they  v/ere 
in  America,  where  people  talked  about  such  without  fear. 
They  had  learned  that  they  would  have  to  pay  a  rent 
of  nine  dollars  a  month  for  a  flat,  and  there  was  no  way 
of  doing  better,  unless  the  family  of  twelve  was  to  exist  in 
one  or  two  rooms,  as  at  present.  If  they  paid  rent,  of 
course,  they  might  pay  forever,  and  be  no  better  off; 
whereas,  if  they  could  only  meet  the  extra  expense  in  the 
beginning,  there  would  at  last  come  a  time  when  they 
would  not  have  any  rent  to  pay  for  the  rest  of  their  lives. 

They  figured  it  up.  There  was  a  little  left  of  the 
money  belonging  to  Teta  Elzbieta,  and  there  was  a 
little  left  to  Jurgis.  Marija  had  about  fifty  dollars 
pinned  up  somewhere  in  her  stockings,  and  Grandfather 
Anthony  had  part  of  the  money  he  had  gotten  for  his 
farm.  If  they  all  combined,  they  would  have  enough  to 
make  the  first  payment;  and  if  they  had  employment, 
so  that  they  could  be  sure  of  the  future,  it  might  really 
prove  the  best  plan.  It  was,  of  course,  not  a  thing  even 
to  be  talked  of  lightly ;  it  was  a  thing  they  would  have  to 
sift  to  the  bottom.  And  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  if  they 
were  going  to  make  the  venture,  the  sooner  they  did  it  the 
better;  for  were  they  not  paying  rent  all  the  time,  and 
living  in  a  most  horrible  way  besides?  Jurgis  was  used 
to  dirt  —  there  was  nothing  could  scare  a  man  who  had 
been  with  a  railroad-gang,  where  one  could  gather  up 
the  fleas  off  the  floor  of  the  sleeping-room  by  the  hand¬ 
ful.  But  that  sort  of  thing  would  not  do  for  Ona.  They 
must  have  a  better  place  of  some  sort  very  soon  —  Jurgis 


•54 


THE  JUNGLE 


N 

said  it  with  all  the  assurance  of  a  man  who  had  just  made 
a  dollar  and  fifty -seven  cents  in  a  single  day.  Jurgis  was 
at  a  loss  to  understand  why,  with  wages  as  they  were,  so 
many  of  the  people  of  this  district  should  live  the  way  they 
did. 

The  next  day  Marija  went  to  see  her  “  forelady,”  and 
was  told  to  report  the  first  of  the  week,  and  learn  the 
business  of  can-painter.  Marija  went  home,  singing  out 
loud  all  the  way,  and  was  just  in  time  to  join  Ona  and 
her  stepmother  as  they  were  setting  out  to  go  and  make 
inquiry  concerning  the  house.  That  evening  the  three 
made  their  report  to  the  men  —  the  thing  was  altogether 
as  represented  in  the  circular,  or  at  any  rate  so  the  agent 
had  said.  The  houses  lay  to  the  south,  about  a  mile  and  a 
half  from  the  yards ;  they  were  wonderful  bargains,  the 
gentleman  had  assured  them  —  personally,  and  for  their 
own  good.  He  could  do  this,  so  he  explained  to  them, 
for  the  reason  that  he  had  himself  no  interest  in  their 
sale  —  he  was  merely  the  agent  for  a  company  that  had 
built  them.  These  were  the  last,  and  the  company  was 
going  out  of  business,  so  if  any  one  wished  to  take  advan¬ 
tage  of  this  wonderful  no-rent  plan,  he  would  have  to  be 
very  quick.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  just  a  little 
uncertainty  as  to  whether  there  was  a  single  house  left ; 
for  the  agent  had  taken  so  manj''  people  to  see  them,  and 
for  all  he  knew  the  company  might  have  parted  with  the 
last.  Seeing  Teta  Elzbieta’s  evident  grief  at  this  news, 
he  added,  after  some  hesitation,  that  if  they  really  in¬ 
tended  to  make  a  purchase,  he  would  send  a  telephone 
message  at  his  own  expense,  and  have  one  of  the  houses 
kept.  So  it  had  finally  been  arranged  —  and  they  were 
to  go  and  make  an  inspection  the  following  Sunday 
morning. 

That  was  Thursday ;  and  all  the  rest  of  the  week  the  kill¬ 
ing-gang  at  Brown’s  worked  at  full  pressure,  and  Jurgis 
cleared  a  dollar  seventy-five  every  day.  That  was  at  the 
rate  of  ten  and  one-half  dollars  a  week,  or  forty-five  a  month; 
Jurgis  was  not  able  to  figure,  except  it  was  a  very  simple 
sum,  but  Ona  was  like  lightning  at  such  things,  and  she 


THE  JUNGLE 


55 


worked  out  the  problem  for  the  family.  Marija  and  Jonas 
were  each  to  pay  sixteen  dollars  a  month  board,  and  the  old 
man  insisted  that  he  could  do  the  same  as  soon  as  he  got 
a  place  —  which  might  be  any  day  now.  That  would  make 
ninety-three  dollars.  Then  Marija  and  Jonas  were  between 
them  to  take  a  third  share  in  the  house,  which  would  leave 
only  eight  dollars  a  month  for  Jurgis  to  contribute  to  the 
payment.  So  they  would  have  eighty -five  dollars  a  month, 
—  or,  supposing  that  Dede  Antanas  did  not  get  work  at 
once,  seventy  dollars  a  month  —  which  ought  surely  to  be 
sufficient  for  the  support  of  a  family  of  twelve. 

An  hour  before  the  time  on  Sunday  morning  the  entire 
party  set  out.  They  had  the  address  written  on  a  piece  of 
paper,  which  they  showed  to  some  one  now  and  then.  It 
proved  to  be  a  long  mile  and  a  half,  but  they  walked  it, 
and  half  an  hour  or  so  later  the  agent  put  in  an  appearance. 
He  was  a  smooth  and  florid  personage,  elegantly  dressed,  and 
he  spoke  their  language  freely,  which  gave  him  a  great 
advantage  in  dealing  with  them.  He  escorted  them  to  the 
house,  which  was  one  of  a  long  row  of  the  typical  frame 
dwellings  of  the  neighborhood,  where  architecture  is  a 
luxury  that  is  dispensed  with.  Ona’s  heart  sank,  for  the 
house  was  not  as  it  was  shown  in  the  picture ;  the  color- 
scheme  was  different,  for  one  thing,  and  then  it  did  not 
seem  quite  so  big.  Still,  it  was  freshly  painted,  and  made 
a  considerable  show.  It  was  all  brand-nev/,  so  the  agent 
told  them,  but  he  talked  so  incessantly  that  they  were  quite 
confused,  and  did  not  have  time  to  ask  many  questions. 
There  were  all  sorts  of  things  they  had  made  up  their  minds 
to  inquire  about,  but  when  the  time  came,  tliey  either  for¬ 
got  them  or  lacked  the  courage.  The  other  houses  in  the 
row  did  not  seem  to  be  new,  and  few  of  them  seemed  to  be 
occupied.  When  they  ventured  to  hint  at  this,  the  agent’s 
reply  was  that  the  purchasers  would  be  moving  in  shortly. 
To  press  the  matter  would  have  seemed  to  be  doubting  his 
word,  and  never  in  their  lives  had  any  one  of  them  ever 
spoken  to  a  person  of  the  class  called  “  gentleman  ”  except 
with  deference  and  humility. 

The  house  had  a  basement,  about  two  feet  below  the 


56 


THE  JUNGLE 


street  line,  and  a  single  story,  about  six  feet  above  it, 
reached  by  a  flight  of  steps.  In  addition  there  was  an 
attic,  made  by  the  peak  of  the  roof,  and  having  one  small 
window  in  each  end.  The  street  in  front  of  the  house 
was  unpaved  and  unlighted,  and  the  view  from  it  con¬ 
sisted  of  a  few  exactly  similar  houses,  scattered  here  and 
there  upon  lots  grown  up  with  dingy  brown  weeds.  The 
house  inside  contained  four  rooms,  plastered  white;  the 
basement  was  but  a  frame,  the  walls  being  unplastered 
and  the  floor  not  laid.  The  agent  explained  that  the 
houses  were  built  that  way,  as  the  purchasers  generally 
preferred  to  finish  the  basements  to  suit  their  own  taste. 
The  attic  was  also  unfinished  —  the  family  had  been,  figur¬ 
ing  that  in  case  of  an  emergency  they  could  rent  this  attic, 
but  they  found  that  there  was  not  even  a  floor,  nothing  but 
joists,  and  beneath  them  the  lath  and  plaster  of  the  ceiling 
below.  All  of  this,  however,  did  not  chill  their  ardor  as 
much  as  might  have  been  expected,  because  of  the  volu¬ 
bility  of  the  agent.  There  was  no  end  to  the  advantages 
of  the  house,  as  he  set  them  forth,  and  he  was  not  silent 
for  an  instant ;  he  showed  them  everything,  down  to  the 
locks  on  the  doors  and  the  catches  on  the  windows,  and 
how  to  work  them.  He  showed  them  the  sink  in  the 
kitchen,  with  running  water  and  a  faucet,  something 
which  Teta  Elzbieta  had  never  in  her  wildest  dreams 
hoped  to  possess.  After  a  discovery  such  as  that  it 
would  have  seemed  ungrateful  to  find  any  fault,  and  so 
they  tried  to  shut  their  eyes  to  other  defects. 

Still,  thej  were  peasant  people,  and  they  hung  on  to 
their  money  by  instinct;  it  was  quite  in  vain  that  the 
agent  hinted  at  promptness  —  they  would  see,  they  would 
see,  they  told  him,  they  could  not  decide  until  they  had 
had  more  time.  And  so  they  went  homo  again,  and 
all  day  and  evening  there  was  figuring  and  debating.  It 
was  an  agony  to  them  to  have  to  make  up  their  minds  in 
a  matter  such  as  this.  They  never  could  agree  all  to¬ 
gether  ;  there  were  so  many  arguments  upon  each  side, 
and  one  would  be  obstinate,  and  no  sooner  would  the  rest 
have  convinced  him  than  it  would  transpire  that  his  argu- 


THE  JUNGLE 


51 


Kents  had  caused  another  to  waver.  Once,  in  the  even* 
ing,  when  they  were  all  in  harmony,  and  the  house  was 
as  good  as  bought,  Szedvilas  came  in  and  upset  them  again. 
Szedvilas  had  no  use  for  property-owning,  lie  told  them 
cruel  stories  of  people  who  had  been  done  to  death  in  this 
“  buying  a  home  ”  swindle.  They  would  be  almost  sure 
to  get  into  a  tight  place  and  lose  all  their  money;  and 
there  was  no  end  of  expense  that  one  could  never  foresee; 
and  the  house  might  be  good-for-nothing  from  top  to  bot¬ 
tom  —  how  was  a  poor  man  to  know  ?  Then,  too,  they 
would  swindle  you  with  the  contract  —  and  how  was  a 
poor  man  to  understand  anything  about  a  contract  ?  It 
was  all  nothing  but  robbery,  and  there  was  no  safety  but 
m  keeping  out  of  it.  And  pay  rent?  asked  Jurgis.  Ah, 
yes,  to  be  sure,  the  other  answered,  that  too  was  robbery. 
It  was  all  robbery,  for  a  poor  man.  After  half  an  hour  of 
such  depressing  conversation,  they  had  their  minds  quite 
made  up  that  they  had  been  saved  at  the  brink  of  a  preci¬ 
pice;  but  then  Szedvilas  went  away,  and  Jonas,  who  was 
a  sharp  little  man,  reminded  them  that  the  delicatessen 
business  was  a  failure,  according  to  its  proprietor,  and 
that  this  might  account  for  his  pessimistic  views.  Which, 
of  course,  reopened  the  subject  I 

The  controlling  factor  was  that  they  could  not  stay 
where  they  were  —  they  had  to  go  somewhere.  And  when 
they  gave  up  the  house  plan  and  decided  to  rent,  the 
prospect  of  paying  out  nine  dollars  a  month  forever  they 
found  just  as  hard  to  face.  All  day  and  all  night  for 
nearly  a  whole  week  they  wrestled  with  the  problem,  and 
then  in  the  end  Jurgis  took  the  responsibility.  Brother 
Jonas  had  gotten  his  job,  and  was  pushing  a  truck  in 
Durham’s ;  and  the  killing-gang  at  Brown’s  continued  to 
work  early  and  late,  so  that  Jurgis  grew  more  confident 
every  hour,  more  certain  of  his  mastership.  It  was  the 
kind  of  thing  the  man  of  the  family  had  to  decide  and 
carry  through,  he  told  himself.  Others  might  have  failed 
at  it,  but  he  was  not  the  failing  kind  —  he  would  show 
them  how  to  do  it.  He  would  work  all  day,  and  all  night, 
too,  if  need  be;  he  would  never  rest  until  the  house  was 


58 


THE  JUNGLE 


paid  for  and  his  people  had  a  home.  So  he  told  them,  and 
so  in  the  end  the  decision  was  made. 

They  had  talked  about  looking  at  more  houses  before 
they  made  the  purchase  ;  but  then  they  did  not  know 
where  any  more  v/ere,  and  they  did  not  know  any  way  of 
finding  out.  The  one  they  had  seen  held  the  sway  in  their 
thoughts ;  whenever  they  thought  of  themselves  in  a 
house,  it  was  this  house  that  they  thought  of.  And  so 
they  went  and  told  the  agent  that  they  were  ready  to 
make  the  agreement.  They  knew,  as  an  abstract  proposi¬ 
tion,  that  in  matters  of  business  all  men  are  to  be  accounted 
liars  ;  but  they  could  not  but  have  been  influenced  by  all 
they  had  heard  from  the  eloquent  agent,  and  were  quite 
persuaded  that  the  house  was  something  they  had.  run  a 
risk  of  losing  by  their  delay.  They  drew  a  deep  breath 
when  he  told  them  that  they  were  still  in  time. 

They  were  to  come  on  the  morrow,  and  he  would  have 
the  papers  all  drawn  up.  This  matter  of  papers  was  one 
in  which  Jurgis  understood  to  the  full  the  need  of  cau- 
tion ;  yet  he  could  not  go  himself  —  every  one  told  him 
that  he  could  not  get  a  holiday,  and  that  he  might  lose  his 
job  by  asking.  So  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to 
trust  it  to  the  women,  with  Szedvilas,  who  promised  to  go 
with  them.  Jurgis  spent  a  whole  evening  impressing 
upon  them  the  seriousness  of  the  occasion  —  and  then 
finally,  out  of  innumerable  hiding-places  about  their  per¬ 
sons  and  in  their  baggage,  came  forth  the  precious  wads 
of  money,  to  be  done  up  tightly  in  a  little  bag  and  sewed 
fast  in  the  lining  of  Teta  Elzbieta’s  dress. 

Early  in  the  morning  they  sallied  forth.  Jurgis  had 
given  them  so  many  instructions  and  warned  them  against 
so  many  perils,  that  the  women  were  quite  pale  with 
fright,  and  even  the  imperturbable  delicatessen  vender, 
who  prided  himself  upon  being  a  business  man,  was  ill  at 
ease.  The  agent  had  the  deed  all  ready,  and  invited  them  to 
sit  down  and  read  it ;  this  Szedvilas  proceeded  to  do  —  a 
painful  and  laborious  process,  during  whicii  the  agent 
drummed  upon  the  desk.  Teta  Elzbieta  was  so  embar¬ 
rassed  that  the  perspiration  came  out  upon  her  forehead  in 


THE  JUNGLE 


59  . 

beads  ;  for  was  not  this  reading  as  much  as  to  say  plainly 
to  the  gentleman’s  face  that  they  doubted  his  honesty  ? 
Yet  Jokubas  Szedvilas  read  on  and  on  ;  and  presently 
there  developed  that  he  had  good  reason  for  doing  so. 
For  a  horrible  suspicion  had  begun  dawning  in  his  mind  ; 
he  knitted  his  brows  more  and  more  as  he  read.  This  was 
not  a  deed  of  sale  at  all,  so  far  as  he  could  see — it  pro¬ 
vided  only  for  the  renting  of  the  property  !  It  was  hard 
to  tell,  with  all  this  strange  legal  jargon,  words  he  had 
never  heard  before  ;  but  was  not  this  plain  —  “  the  party 
of  the  first  part  hereby  covenants  and  agrees  to  rent  to 
the  said  party  of  the  second  part !  ”  And  then  again 
—  “a  monthly  rental  of  twelve  dollars,  for  a  period  of 
eight  years  and  four  months  I  ”  Then  Szedvilas  took  off 
his  spectacles,  and  looked  at  the  agent,  and  stammered  a 
question. 

The  agent  was  most  polite,  and  explained  that  that  was 
the  usual  formula ;  that  it  was  always  arranged  that  the 
property  should  be  merely  rented.  He  kept  trying  to 
show  them  something  in  the  next  paragraph ;  but  Szed¬ 
vilas  could  not  get  by  the  word  “  rental  ”  —  and  when  he 
translated  it  to  Teta  Elzbieta,  she  too  was  thrown  into  a 
fright.  They  would  not  own  the  home  at  all,  then,  for 
nearly  nine  years  I  The  agent,  with  infinite  patience, 
began  to  explain  again  ;  but  no  explanation  would  do 
now.  Elzbieta  had  firmly  fixed  in  her  mind  the  last 
solemn  warn.ng  of  Jurgis  :  “If  there  is  anything  wrong, 
do  not  give  him  the  money,  but  go  out  and  get  a  lawyer.’^ 

It  was  an  agonizing  moment,  but  she  sat  in  the  chair,  her 
hands  clenched  like  death,  and  made  a  fearful  effort,  sum- 
moning  all  her  powers,  and  gasped  out  her  purpose. 

Jokubas  translated  her  words.  She  expected  the  agent 
to  fly  into  a  passion,  but  he  was,  to  her  bewilderment,  as 
ever  imperturbable  ;  he  even  offered  to  go  and  get  a  lawyer 
for  her,  but  she  declined  this.  They  Avent  a  long  way,  on 
purpose  to  find  a  man  who  would  not  be  a  confederate. 
Then  let  any  one  imagine  their  dismay,  when,  after  half  an 
hour,  they  came  in  with  a  lawyer,  and  heard  him  greet 
the  agent  by  his  first  name  I 


60 


THE  JUNGLE 


They  felt  that  all  was  lost ;  they  sat  like  prisoners 
summoned  to  hear  the  reading  of  their  death-warrants 
There  was  nothing  more  that  they  could  do  —  they  were 
trapped  I  The  lawyer  read  over  the  deed,  and  when  he 
had  read  it  he  informed  Szedvilas  that  it  was  all  perfectly 
regular,  that  the  deed  was  a  blank  deed  such  as  was  often 
used  in  these  sales.  And  was  the  price  as  agreed  ?  the  old 
man  asked  —  three  hundred  dollars  down,  and  the  balance 
at  twelve  dollars  a  month,  till  the  total  of  fifteen  hundred 
dollars  had  been  paid  ?  Yes,  that  was  correct.  And  it 
was  for  the  sale  of  such  and  such  a  house  —  the  house  and 
lot  and  everything  ?  Yes,  —  and  the  lawyer  showed  him 
where  that  was  all  written.  And  it  was  all  perfectly  reg¬ 
ular —  there  were  no  tricks  about  it  of  any  sort?  They 
were  poor  people,  and  this  was  all  they  had  in  the  world, 
and  if  there  was  anything  wrong  they  would  be  ruined. 
And  so  Szedvilas  went  on,  asking  one  trembling  question 
after  another,  while  the  eyes  of  the  women  folks  were 
fixed  upon  him  in  mute  agony.  They  could  not  under, 
stand  what  he  was  saying,  but  they  knew  that  upon  it 
their  fate  depended.  And  when  at  last  be  had  questioned 
until  there  was  no  more  questioning  to  be  done,  and  the 
time  came  for  them  to  make  up  their  minds,  and  either 
close  the  bargain  or  reject  it,  it  was  all  that  poor  Teta 
Elzbieta  could  do  to  keep  from  bursting  into  tears.  Joku- 
bas  had  asked  her  if  she  wished  to  sign  ;  he  had  asked 
her  twice  —  and  what  could  she  say  ?  How  did  she  know 
if  this  lawyer  were  telling  the  truth  —  that  he  was  not  in 
the  conspiracy  ?  And  yet,  how  could  she  say  so  —  wha\> 
excuse  could  she  give  ?  The  eyes  of  every  one  in  the  room 
were  upon  her,  awaiting  her  decision ;  and  at  last,  half 
blind  with  her  tears,  she  began  fumbling  in  her  jacket, 
where  she  had  pinned  the  precious  money.  And  she 
brought  it  out  and  unwrapped  it  before  the  men.  All  of 
this  Ona  sat  watching,  from  a  corner  of  the  room,  twisting 
her  hands  together,  meantime,  in  a  fever  of  fright.  Ona 
longed  to  cry  out  and  tell  her  stepmother  to  stop,  that  it 
was  all  a  trap ;  but  there  seemed  to  be  something  clutching 
her  by  the  throat,  and  she  could  not  make  a  sound.  And 


THE  JUNGLE 


61 


80  Teta  Elzbieta  laid  the  money  on  the  table,  and  the 
agent  picked  it  up  and  counted  it,  and  then  wrote  them  a 
receipt  for  it  and  passed  them  the  deed.  Then  he  gave  a 
sigh  of  satisfaction,  and  rose  and  shook  hands  witli  them 
dll,  still  as  smooth  and  polite  as  at  the  beginning.  Ona 
had  a  dim  recollection  of  the  lawyer  telling  Szedvilas  that 
his  charge  was  a  dollar,  which  occasioned  some  debate, 
and  more  agony  ;  and  then,  after  they  had  paid  that,  too, 
they  went  out  into  the  street,  her  stepmother  clutching 
the  deed  in  her  hand.  They  were  so  weak  from  fright 
that  they  could  not  walk,  but  had  to  sit  down  on  the  way. 

So  they  went  home,  with  a  deadly  terror  gnawing  at  their 
souls ;  and  that  evening  Jurgis  came  home  and  heard 
their  story,  and  that  was  the  end.  Jurgis  was  sure  that 
they  had  been  swindled,  and  were  ruined  ;  and  he  tore  his 
hair  and  cursed  like  a  madman,  swearing  that  he  would 
kill  the  agent  that  very  night.  In  the  end  he  seized  the 
paper  and  rushed  out  of  the  house,  and  ail  the  way  across 
the  yards  to  Halsted  Street.  He  dragged  Szedvilas  out 
from  his  supper,  and  together  they  rushed  to  consult 
another  lawyer.  When  they  entered  his  office  the  lawyer 
sprang  up,  for  Jurgis  looked  like  a  crazy  person,  with 
flying  hair  and  bloodshot  eyes.  His  companion  explained 
the  situation,  and  the  lawyer  took  the  paper  and  began  to 
read  it,  while  Jurgis  stood  clutching  the  desk  with  knotted 
hands,  trembling  in  every  nerve. 

Once  or  twice  the  lawyer  looked  up  and  asked  a  question 
of  Szedvilas  ;  the  other  did  not  know  a  word  that  he  was 
saying,  but  his  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  lawyer’s  face, 
striving  in  an  agony  of  dread  to  read  his  mind.  He  saw 
the  lawyer  look  up  and  laugh,  and  he  gave  a  gasp  ;  the 
man  said  something  to  Szedvilas,  and  Jurgis  turned  upon 
his  friend,  his  heart  almost  stopping. 

“Well?”  he  panted. 

“  He  says  it  is  all  right,”  said  Szedvilas- 

“  All  right  I  ” 

“  Yes,  he  says  it  is  just  as  it  should  be.”  And  Jurgis, 
in  bis  relief,  sank  down  into  a  chair. 

“Are  you  sure  of  it?”  he  gasped,  and  made  Szedvilas 


62 


THE  JUNGLE 


translate  question  after  question.  He  could  not  hear  it 
often  enough ;  he  could  not  ask  with  enough  variations. 
Yes,  they  had  bought  the  house,  they  had  really  bought 
it.  It  belonged  to  them,  they  had  only  to  pay  the  money 
and  it  w'ould  be  all  right.  Then  Jurgis  covered  his  face 
with  his  hands,  for  there  were  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  he 
felt  like  a  fool.  But  he  had  had  such  a  horrible  fright ; 
strong  man  as  he  was,  it  left  him  almost  too  weak  to 
stand  up. 

The  lawyer  explained  that  the  rental  was  a  form  — the 
property  was  said  to  be  merely  rented  until  the  last  pay¬ 
ment  had  been  made,  the  purpose  being  to  make  it  easier 
to  turn  the  party  out  if  he  did  not  make  the  payments. 
So  long  as  they  paid,  however,  they  had  nothing  to  fear, 
the  house  was  all  theirs. 

Jurgis  was  so  grateful  that  he  paid  the  half  dollar  the 
lawyer  asked  without  winking  an  eyelash,  and  then  rushed 
home  to  tell  the  news  to  the  family.  He  found  Ona  in  a 
faint  and  the  babies  screaming,  and  the  whole  house  in 
an  uproar  —  for  it  had  been  believed  by  all  that  he  had 
gone  to  murder  the  agent.  It  was  hours  before  the  ex¬ 
citement  could  be  calmed ;  and  all  through  that  cruel 
night  Jurgis  would  wake  up  now  and  then  and  hear  Ona 
and  her  stepmother  in  the  next  room,  sobbing  softly  to 
themselves. 


CHAPTER  V 


They  had  bought  thsir  home.  It  was  hard  for  them  to 
realize  that  the  wonderful  house  was  tiieirs  to  move  into 
whenever  they  chose.  They  spent  all  their  time  thinking 
about  it,  and  what  they  were  going  to  put  into  it.  As 
their  week  with  Aniele  was  up  in  three  days,  tliey  lost  no 
time  in  getting  ready.  They  had  to  make  some  shift  to 
furnish  it,  and  every  instant  of  their  leisure  was  given  to 
discussing  this. 

A  person  who  had  such  a  task  before  him  would  not 
need  to  look  very  far  in  Packingtown — he  had  only  to 
walk  up  the  avenue  and  read  the  signs,  or  get  into  a 
street-car,  to  obtain  full  information  as  to  pretty  much 
everything  a  human  creature  could  need.  It  was  quite 
touching,  the  zeal  of  people  to  see  that  his  health  and 
happiness  were  provided  for.  Did  the  person  wish  to 
smoke  ?  There  was  a  little  discourse  about  cigars,  show¬ 
ing  him  exactly  why  the  Thomas  Jefferson  Five-cent  Per- 
fecto  was  the  only  cigar  worthy  of  the  name.  Had  he, 
on  the  other  hand,  smoked  too  much  ?  Here  was  a  remedy 
for  the  smoking  habit,  twenty -five  doses  for  a  quarter,  and 
a  cure  absolutely  guaranteed  in  ten  doses.  In  innumerable 
ways  such  as  this,  the  traveller  found  that  somebody  had 
been  busied  to  make  smooth  his  paths  through  the  world, 
and  to  let  him  know  what  had  been  done  for  him.  In 
Packingtown  the  advertisements  had  a  style  all  of  their 
own,  adapted  to  the  peculiar  population.  One  would  be 
tenderly  solicitous.  “  Is  your  wife  pale  ?  ”  it  would  in¬ 
quire.  “Is  she  discouraged,  does  she  drag  herself  about 
the  house  and  find  fault  with  everything?  Why  do  you 
not  tell  her  to  try  Dr.  Lanahan’s  Life  Preservers?” 
Another  would  be  jocular  in  tone,  slapping  3'ou  on  the 

63 


64 


THE  JUNGLE 


back,  so  to  speak.  “  Don’t  be  a  chump  1  ”  it  would  ex 
claim.  “  Go  and  get  the  Goliath  Bunion  Cure.”  “  Get 
a  move  on  you  I  ”  would  chime  in  another.  “It’s  easy,  if 
you  wear  the  Eureka  Two-fifty  Shoe.” 

Among  these  importunate  signs  was  one  that  had 
caught  the  attention  of  the  family  by  its  pictures.  It 
showed  two  very  pretty  little  birds  building  themselves 
a  home;  and  Marija  had  asked  an  acquaintance  to  read  it 
to  her,  and  told  them  that  it  related  to  the  furnishing  of 
a  house.  “Feather  j'-onr  nest,”  it  ran  —  and  went  on  to 
say  that  it  could  furnish  all  the  necessary  feathers  for  a 
four-room  nest  for  the  ludicrously  small  sum  of  seventy- 
five  dollars.  The  particularly  important  thing  about  this 
offer  was  that  only  a  small  part  of  the  mone3^  need  be  had 
at  once  — the  rest  one  might  pay  a  few  dollars  every 
month.  Our  friends  had  to  have  some  furniture,  there 
was  no  getting  away  from  that ;  but  their  little  fund  of 
money  had  sunk  so  low  that  they  could  hardly  get  to 
sleep  at  night,  and  so  they  fled  to  this  as  their  deliver¬ 
ance.  There  was  more  agony  and  another  paper  for  Elz- 
bieta  to  sign,  and  then  one  night  when  Jurgis  came  home, 
he  was  told  the  breathless  tidings  that  the  furniture  had 
arrived  and  was  safely  stowed  in  the  house :  a  parlor  set 
of  four  pieces,  a  bedroom  set  of  three  pieces,  a  dining¬ 
room  table  and  four  chairs,  a  toilet-set  with  beautiful  pink 
roses  painted  all  over  it,  an  assortment  of  crockerjq  also 
with  pink  roses — and  so  on.  One  of  the  plates  in  the 
set  had  been  found  broken  when  they  unpacked  it,  and 
Ona  was  going  to  the  store  the  first  thing  in  the  morning 
to  make  them  change  it ;  also  they  had  promised  three 
sauce-pans,  and  there  had  only  two  come,  and  did  Jurgis 
think  that  they  were  trying  to  cheat  them  ? 

The  next  day  they  went  to  the  house  ;  and  when  the 
men  came  from  work  they  ate  a  few  hurried  mouthfuls 
at  Aniele’s,  and  then  set  to  work  at  the  task  of  carrying 
their  belongings  to  their  new  home.  The  distance  was 
in  reality  over  two  miles,  but  Jurgis  made  two  trips  that 
night,  each  time  with  a  huge  pile  of  mattresses  and  bed¬ 
ding  on  his  head,  with  bundles  of  clothing  and  bags  and 


THP]  JUNGLE 


65 


tilings  tied  up  inside.  Anywhere  else  in  Chicago  he 
would  have  stood  a  good  chance  of  being  arrested ;  but 
the  policemen  in  Packingtown  were  apparently  used  to 
these  informal  rnovings,  and  contented  themselves  with  a 
cursory  examination  now  and  then.  It  was  quite  wonder¬ 
ful  to  see  how  fine  the  house  looked,  with  all  the  things  in 
it,  even  by  the  dim  light  of  a  lamp ;  it  was  really  home, 
and  almost  as  exciting  as  the  placard  had  described  it. 
Ona  was  fairly  dancing,  and  she  and  Cousin  Marija  took 
Jurgis  by  the  arm  and  escorted  him  from  room  to  room, 
sitting  in  each  chair  by  turns,  and  then  insisting  that  he 
should  do  the  same.  One  chair  squeaked  with  his  great 
weight,  and  they  screamed  with  fright,  and  woke  the 
baby  and  brought  everybody  running.  Altogether  it 
was  a  great  day  ;  and  tired  as  they  were,  Jurgis  and  Ona 
sat  up  late,  contented  simply  to  hold  each  other  and  gaze 
in  rapture  about  the  room.  They  were  going  to  be  mar¬ 
ried  as  soon  as  they  could  get  everything  settled,  and  a 
little  spare  money  put  by  ;  and  this  was  to  be  their  home 
—  that  little  room  yonder  would  be  theirs  I 

It  was  in  truth  a  never-ending  delight,  the  fixing  up  of 
this  house.  They  had  no  money  to  spend  for  the  pleasure 
of  spending,  but  there  were  a  few  absolutely  necessary 
things,  and  the  buying  of  these  v/as  a  perpetual  adventure 
for  Ona.  It  must  always  be  done  at  night,  so  that  Jurgis 
could  go  along  ;  and  even  if  it  were  only  a  pepper-cruet, 
or  half  a  dozen  glasses  for  ten  cents,  that  was  enough  for 
an  expedition.  On  Saturday  night  they  came  home  with 
a  great  basketful  of  things,  and  spread  them  out  on  the 
table,  while  every  one  stood  round,  and  the  children  climbed 
up  on  the  chairs,  or  howled  to  be  lifted  up  to  see.  There 
were  sugar  and  salt  and  tea  and  crackers,  and  a  can  of  lard 
and  a  milk-pail,  and  a  scrubbing-brush,  and  a  pair  of  shoes 
for  the  second  oldest  boy,  and  a  can  of  oil,  and  a  tack -ham¬ 
mer,  and  a  pound  of  nails.  These  last  were  to  be  driven 
into  the  walls  of  the  kitchen  and  the  bedrooms,  to  hang 
things  on  ;  and  there  was  a  family  discussion  as  to  the 
place  where  each  one  was  to  be  driven.  Then  Jurgis 
would  trv  to  hammer,  and  hit  his  fingers  because  ^ 


66 


THE  JUNGLE 


hammer  was  too  small,  and  get  mad  because  Ona  had 
refused  to  let  him  pay  fifteen  cents  more  and  get  a  bigger 
hammer ;  and  Ona  would  be  invited  to  try  it  herself,  and 
hurt  her  tliumb,  and  cry  out,  which  necessitated  the 
thumb’s  being  kissed  by  Jurgis.  Finally,  after  every  one 
had  had  a  try,  the  nails  would  be  driven,  and  something 
hung  up.  Jurgis  had  come  home  with  a  big  packing-box 
on  his  head,  and  he  sent  Jonas  to  get  another  that  he  had 
bought.  He  meant  to  take  one  side  out  of  these  to-morrow, 
and  put  shelves  in  them,  and  make  them  into  bureaus  and 
places  to  keep  things  for  the  bedrooms.  The  nest  which 
had  been  advertised  had  not  included  feathers  for  quite 
so  many  birds  as  there  were  in  this  family. 

They  had,  of  course,  put  their  dining-table  in  the 
kitchen,  and  the  dining-room  was  used  as  the  bedroom  of 
Teta  Elzbieta  and  five  of  her  children.  She  and  the  two 
youngest  slept  in  the  only  bed,  and  the  other  three  had  a 
mattress  on  the  floor.  Ona  and  her  cousin  dragged  a 
mattress  into  the  parlor  and  slept  at  night,  and  the 
three  men  and  the  oldest  boy  slept  in  the  other  room, 
having  nothing  but  the  very  level  floor  to  rest  on  for 
the  present.  Even  so,  however,  they  slept  soundly-— 
it  was  necessary  for  Teta  Elzbieta  to  pound  more  than  once 
on  the  door  at  a  quarter  past  five  every  morning.  She 
would  have  ready  a  great  pot  full  of  steaming  black  coffee, 
and  oatmeal  and  bread  and  smoked  sausages;  and  then 
she  would  fix  them  their  dinner  pails  with  more  thick 
slices  of  bread  with  lard  between  them  —  they  could  not 
afford  butter  —  and  some  onions  and  a  piece  of  cheese,  and 
so  they  would  tramp  away  to  work. 

This  was  the  first  time  in  his  life  that  he  had  ever  really 
worked,  it  seemed  to  Jurgis  ;  it  was  the  first  time  that  he 
had  ever  had  anything  to  do  which  took  all  he  had  in  him. 
Jurgis  had  stood  with  the  rest  up  in  the  gallery  and 
watched  the  men  on  the  killing-beds,  marvelling  at  their 
speed  and  power  as  if  they  had  been  wonderful  machines ; 
it  somehow  never  occurred  to  one  to  think  of  the  flesh-and- 
blood  side  of  it  —  that  is,  not  until  he  actually  got  down 
into  the  pit  and  took  off  his  coat.  Then  he  saw  things  in  a 


THE  JUKGLE 


67 


different  light,  he  got  at  the  inside  of  them.  The  pace 
they  set  here,  it  was  one  that  called  for  every  faculty  of  a 
man  —  from  the  instant  the  first  steer  fell  till  the  sound¬ 
ing  of  the  noon  whistle,  and  again  from  half-past  twelve 
till  heaven  only  knew  what  hour  in  the  late  afternoon  or 
evening,  there  was  never  one  instant’s  rest  for  a  man,  for 
his  hand  or  his  eye  or  his  brain.  Jurgis  saw  how  they 
managed  it ;  there  were  portions  of  the  work  which  deter¬ 
mined  the  pace  of  the  rest,  and  for  these  they  had  picked 
men  whom  they  paid  high  wages,  and  whom  they  changed 
frequently.  Y ou  might  easily  pick  out  these  pace-makers, 
for  they  worked  under  the  eye  of  the  bosses,  and  they 
worked  like  men  possessed.  This  was  called  “speeding 
up  the  gang,”  and  if  any  man  could  not  keep  up  with  the 
pace,  there  were  hundreds  outside  begging  to  try. 

Yet  Jurgis  did  not  mind  it;  he  rather  enjoyed  it.  It 
saved  him  the  necessity  of  flinging  his  arms  about  and 
fidgeting  as  he  did  in  most  work.  He  would  laugh  to 
himself  as  he  ran  down  the  line,  darting  a  glance  now  and 
then  at  the  man  ahead  of  him.  It  was  not  the  pleasantest 
work  one  could  think  of,  but  it  was  necessary  work ;  and 
what  more  had  a  man  the  right  to  ask  than  a  chance 
to  do  something  useful,  and  to  get  good  pay  for  doing 
it? 

So  Jurgis  thought,  and  so  he  spoke,  in  his  bold,  free 
waj'';  very  much  to  his  surprise,  he  found  that  it  had  a 
tendency  to  get  him  into  trouble.  For  most  of  the  men 
here  took  a  fearfully  different  view  of  the  thing.  He  was 
quite  dismayed  when  he  first  began  to  find  it  out  —  that 
most  of  the  men  hated  their  work.  It  seemed  strange, 
it  was  even  terrible,  when  you  came  to  find  out  the 
universality  of  the  sentiment;  but  it  was  certainly  the 
fact  —  they  hated  their  work.  They  hated  the  bosses  and 
they  hated  the  owners ;  they  hated  the  whole  place,  the 
whole  neighborhood  —  even  the  whole  city,  with  an  all- 
inclusive  hatred,  bitter  and  fierce.  Women  and  little 
children  would  fall  to  cursing  about  it;  it  was  rotten, 
rotten  as  hell  —  everything  was  rotten.  When  Jurgis 
would  ask  them  what  they  meant,  they  would  begin 


68 


THE  JUNGLE 


to  get  suspicious,  and  content  themselves  with  saying, 
“  Never  mind,  you  stay  here  and  see  for  yourself,” 

One  of  the  first  problems  that  Jurgis  ran  upon  was  that 
of  the  unions.  He  had  had  no  experience  with  unions, 
and  he  had  to  have  it  explained  to  him  that  the  men 
were  banded  together  for  the  purpose  of  fighting  for 
their  rights.  Jurgis  asked  them  what  they  meant  by 
their  rights,  a  question  in  which  he  was  quite  sincere,  for 
he  had  not  any  idea  of  any  rights  that  he  had,  except  the 
right  to  hunt  for  a  job,  and  do  as  he  was  told  when  he 
got  it.  Generally,  however,  this  harmless  question  would 
only  make  his  fellow-workingmen  lose  their  tempers  and 
call  him  a  fool.  There  was  a  delegate  of  the  butcher- 
helpers’  union  wb  o  came  to  see  Jurgis  to  enroll  him ;  and 
when  Jurgis  found  that  this  meant  that  he  would  have  to 
part  with  some  of  his  money,  he  froze  up  directly,  and  the 
delegate,  who  was  an  Irishman  and  only  knew  a  few  words 
of  Lithuanian,  lost  his  temper  and  began  to  threaten  him. 
In  the  end  Jurgis  got  into  a  fine  rage,  and  made  it  suffi¬ 
ciently  plain  that  it  would  take  more  than  one  Irishman 
to  scare  him  into  a  union.  Little  by  little  he  gathered 
that  the  main  thing  the  men  wanted  was  to  put  a  stop  to 
the  habit  of  “  speeding-up  ” ;  they  were  trying  their  best 
to  force  a  lessening  of  the  pace,  for  there  were  some,  they 
said,  who  could  not  keep  up  with  it,  whom  it  was  killing. 
But  Jurgis  had  no  sympathy  with  such  ideas  as  this— -he 
could  do  the  work  lumself,  and  so  could  the  rest  of  them, 
he  declared,  if  they  were  good  for  anything.  If  they 
couldn’t  do  it,  let  them  go  somewhere  else.  Jurgis  had 
not  studied  the  books,  and  he  would  not  have  known  how 
to  pronounce  “laissez-faire”;  but  he  had  been  round  the 
world  enough  to  know  that  a  man  has  to  shift  for  himself 
in  it,  and  that  if  he  gets  the  worst  of  it,  there  is  nobody 
to  listen  to  him  holler. 

Let  there  have  been  known  to  be  philosophers  and  plain 
men  who  swore  by  Malthus  in  the  books,  and  would,  never¬ 
theless,  subscribe  to  a  relief  fund  in  time  of  a  famine.  It 
was  the  same  with  Jurgis,  who  consigned  the  unfit  to 
destruction,  while  going  about  8.11  day  sick  at  heart 


THE  JUNGLE 


69 


because  of  his  poor  old  father,  who  was  wandering  some¬ 
where  in  the  yards  begging  for  a  chance  to  earn  his 
bread.  Old  Antanas  had  been  a  worker  ever  since  he 
was  a  child ;  he  had  run  away  from  home  when  he  was 
twelve,  because  his  father  beat  him  for  trying  to  learn  to 
read.  And  he  was  a  faithful  man,  too ;  he  was  a  man  you 
might  leave  alone  for  a  month,  if  only  you  had  made  him 
understand  what  you  wanted  him  to  do  in  the  meantime. 
And  now  here  he  was,  worn  out  in  soul  and  body,  and 
with  no  more  place  in  the  world  than  a  sick  dog.  He 
had  his  home,  as  it  happened,  and  some  one  who  would 
care  for  him  if  he  never  got  a  job;  but  his  son  could 
not  help  thinking,  suppose  this  had  not  been  the  case. 
Antanas  Rudkus  had  been  into  every  building  in  Pack- 
ingtown  by  this  time,  and  into  nearly  every  room;  he 
had  stood  mornings  among  the  crowd  of  applicants  till 
the  very  policemen  had  come  to  know  his  face  and  to  tell 
him  to  go  home  and  give  it  up.  He  had  been  likewise  to 
all  the  stores  and  saloons  for  a  mile  about,  begging  for 
some  little  thing  to  do ;  and  everywhere  they  had  ordered 
him  out,  sometimes  wdth  curses,  and  not  once  even  stop¬ 
ping  to  ask  him.  a  question. 

So,  after  all,  there  was  a  crack  in  the  fine  structure  of 
Jurgis’s  faith  in  things  as  they  are.  The  crack  was  wide 
while  Dede  Antanas  was  hunting  a  job— -and  it  was  yet 
wider  when  he  finally  got  it.  For  one  evening  the  old 
man  came  home  in  a  great  state  of  excitement,  with  the 
tale  that  he  had  been  approached  by  a  man  in  one  of 
the  corridors  of  the  pickle-rooms  of  Durham’s,  and  asked 
what  he  would  pay  to  get  a  job.  He  had  not  kno^vn 
what  to  make  of  this  at  first ;  but  the  man  had  gone  on 
with  matter-of-fact  frankness  to  say  that  he  could  get 
him  a  job,  provided  that  he  were  willing  to  pay  one-third 
of  his  wages  for  it.  Was  he  a  boss?  Antanas  had  asked; 
to  which  the  man  had  replied  that  that  was  nobody’s  busi¬ 
ness,  but  that  he  could  do  what  he  said. 

Jurgis  had  made  some  friends  by  this  time,  and  ho 
sought  one  of  them  and  asked  what  this  meant.  The 
friend,  who  was  named  Tamoszius  Kuszleika,  was  a  sharp 


70 


THE  JUNGLE 


little  man  who  folded  hides  on  the  killing-beds,  and  he 
listened  to  what  Jurgis  had  to  say  without  seeming  at  all 
surprised.  They  were  common  enough,  he  said,  such 
cases  of  petty  graft.  It  was  simply  some  boss  who  pro¬ 
posed  to  add  a  little  to  his  income.  After  Jurgis  had 
been  there  awhile  he  would  know  that  the  plants  were 
simply  honeycombed  with  rottenness  of  that  sort  —  the 
bosses  grafted  off  the  men,  and  they  grafted  off  each 
other ;  and  some  day  the  superintendent  would  find  out 
about  the  boss,  and  then  he  would  graft  off  the  boss. 
Warming  to  the  subject,  Tamoszius  went  on  to  explain 
the  situation.  Here  was  Durham’s,  for  instance,  owned  by 
a  man  who  was  trying  to  make  as  much  money  out  of  it 
as  he  could,  and  did  not  care  in  the  least  how  he  did  it ; 
and  underneath  him,  ranged  in  ranks  and  grades  like  an 
army,  were  managers  and  superintendents  and  foremen, 
each  one  driving  the  man  next  below  him  and  trying  to 
squeeze  out  of  him  as  much  work  as  possible.  And  all 
the  men  of  the  same  rank  were  pitted  against  each  other ; 
the  accounts  of  each  were  kept  separately,  and  every  man 
lived  in  terror  of  losing  his  job,  if  another  made  a  better 
record  than  he.  So  from  top  to  bottom  the  place  was 
simply  a  seething  cauldron  of  jealousies  and  hatreds  ; 
there  was  no  loyalty  or  decency  anywhere  about  it, 
there  was  no  place  in  it  where  a  man  counted  for  any¬ 
thing  against  a  dollar.  And  worse  than  there  being  no 
decency,  there  was  not  even  any  honesty.  The  reason 
for  that  ?  Who  could  say  ?  It  must  have  been  old 
Durham  in  the  beginning ;  it  was  a  heritage  which  the 
self-made  merchant  had  left  to  his  son,  along  with  his 
millions. 

Jurgis  would  find  out  these  things  for  himself,  if  he 
stayed  there  long  enough  ;  it  was  the  men  who  had  to  do 
all  the  dirty  jobs,  and  so  there  was  no  deceiving  them  ; 
and  they  caught  the  spirit  of  the  place,  and  did  like  all 
the  rest.  Jurgis  had  come  there,  and  thought  he  was 
going  to  make  himself  useful,  and  rise  and  become  a 
skilled  man;  but  he  would  soon  find  out  his  error  —  for 
nobody  rose  in  Packingtown  by  doing  good  work.  You 


THE  JUNGLE 


71 


could  lay  that  down  for  a  rule  —  if  you  met  a  man  who 
was  rising  in  Packingtown,  you  met  a  knave.  That  man 
who  had  been  sent  to  Jurgis’s  father  by  the  boss,  he  would 
rise ;  the  man  who  told  tales  and  spied  upon  his  fellows 
would  rise;  but  the  man  who  minded  his  own  business 
and  did  his  work  —  why,  they  would  “speed  him  up”  till 
they  had  worn  him  out,  and  then  they  would  throw  him 
into  the  gutter. 

Jurgis  went  home  with  his  head  buzzing.  Yet  he  could 
not  bring  himself  to  believe  such  things — no,  it  could  not 
be  so.  Tamoszius  was  simply  another  of  the  grumblers. 
He  was  a  man  who  spent  all  his  time  fiddling;  and  he 
would  go  to  parties  at  night  and  not  get  home  till  sunrise, 
and  so  of  course  he  did  not  feel  like  work.  Then,  too, 
he  was  a  puny  little  chap  ;  and  so  he  had  been  left  behind 
in  the  race,  and  that  was  why  he  was  sore.  And  yet  so 
many  strange  things  kept  coming  to  Jurgis’s  notice  e\ery 
day  I 

He  tried  to  persuade  his  father  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  offer.  But  old  Antanas  had  begged  until  he  was 
worn  out,  and  all  his  courage  was  gone ;  he  wanted  a  job, 
any  sort  of  a  job.  So  the  next  day  he  went  and  found  the 
man  who  had  spoken  to  him,  and  promised  to  bring  him  a 
third  of  all  he  earned ;  and  that  same  day  he  was  put  to 
work  in  Durham’s  cellars.  It  was  a  “  pickle-room,”  where 
there  was  never  a  dry  spot  to  stand  upon,  and  so  he  had 
to  take  nearly  the  whole  of  his  first  week’s  earnings 
to  buy  him  a  pair  of  heavy-soled  boots.  He  was  a 
“  squeedgie  ”  man ;  his  job  was  to  go  about  all  day  with  a 
long-handled  mop,  swabbing  up  the  floor.  Except  that 
it  was  damp  and  dark,  it  was  not  an  unpleasant  job,  in 
summer. 

Now  Antanas  Rudkus  was  the  meekest  man  that  God 
ever  put  on  earth ;  and  so  Jurgis  found  it  a  striking  con¬ 
firmation  of  what  the  men  all  said,  that  his  father  had 
been  at  work  only  two  days  before  he  came  home  as  bitter 
as  any  of  them,  and  cursing  Durham’s  with  all  the  power 
of  his  soul.  For  they  had  set  him  to  cleaning  out  the 
traps ;  and  the  family  sat  round  and  listened  in  wonder 


THE  junglb; 


while  he  told  them  what  that  meant.  It  seemed  that  he 
was  working  in  the  room  where  the  men  prepared  the  beef 
for  canning,  and  the  beef  had  lain  in  vats  full  of  chemicals, 
and  men  with  great  forks  speared  it  out  and  dumped  it 
into  trucks,  to  be  taken  to  the  cooking-room.  When  they 
had  speared  out  all  they  could  reach,  they  emptied  the  vat 
on  the  floor,  and  then  with  shovels  scraped  up  the  balance 
and  dumped  it  into  the  truck.  This  floor  was  filthy,  yet 
they  set  Antanas  with  his  mop  slopping  the  “pickle” 
into  a  hole  that  connected  with  a  sink,  where  it  was  caught 
and  used  over  again  forever ;  and  if  that  were  not  enough, 
there  was  a  trap  in  the  pipe,  where  all  the  scraps  of  meat 
and  odds  and  ends  of  refuse  were  caught,  and  every  few 
days  it  was  the  old  man’s  task  to  clean  these  out,  and 
shovel  their  contents  into  one  of  the  trucks  with  the  rest 
of  the  meat  I 

This  was  the  experience  of  Antanas;  and  then  there 
came  also  Jonas  and  Marija  with  tales  to  tell.  Marija  was 
working  for  one  of  the  independent  packers,  and  was  quite 
beside  herself  and  outrageous  with  triumph  over  the  sums 
of  money  she  was  making  as  a  painter  of  cans.  But  one 
day  she  walked  home  with  a  pale-faced  little  woman  who 
worked  opposite  to  her,  .Jadvj^ga  Marcinkus  by  name,  and 
Jadvyga  told  her  how  she,  Marija,  had  chanced  to  get  her 
job.  She  had  taken  the  place  of  an  Irish  woman  who  had 
been  working  in  that  factory  ever  since  any  one  could  re¬ 
member,  for  over  fifteen  years,  so  she  declared.  Mary 
Dennis  was  her  name,  and  a  long  time  ago  she  had  been 
seduced,  and  had  a  little  boy ;  he  was  a  cripple,  and  an 
epileptic,  but  still  he  was  all  that  she  had  in  the  world  to 
love,  and  they  had  lived  in  a  little  room  alone  somewhere 
back  of  Halsted  Street,  where  the  Irish  were.  Mary  had 
had  consumption,  and  all  day  long  you  might  hear  her 
soughing  as  she  worked ;  of  late  she  had  been  going  all  to 
pieces,  and  when  Marija  came,  the  “forelady”  had  sud¬ 
denly  decided  to  turn  her  off.  The  forelady  had  to  come 
ip  to  a  certain  standard  herself,  and  could  not  stop  for 
dck  people,  Jadvyga  explained.  The  fact  that  Mary  had 
Deen  there  so  long  had  not  made  any  difference  to  her  — 


THE  JUifGLE 


73 


it  was  doubtful  if  she  even  knew  that,  for  both  the  forelady 
and  the  superintendent  were  new  people,  having  only  been 
there  two  or  three  years  themselves.  Jadvyga  did  not 
know  what  had  become  of  the  poor  creature ;  she  would 
have  gone  to  see  her,  but  had  been  sick  herself.  She  had 
pains  in  her  back  all  the  time,  Jadvyga  explained,  and 
feared  that  she  had  womb  trouble.  It  was  not  fit  work  for 
a  woman,  handling  fourteen-pound  cans  all  day. 

It  was  a  striking  circumstance  that  Jonas,  too,  had 
gotten  his  job  by  the  misfortune  of  some  other  person. 
Jonas  pushed  a  truck  loaded  with  hams  from  the  smoke- 
rooms  on  to  an  elevator,  and  thence  to  the  packing-rooms. 
The  trucks  were  all  of  iron,  and  heavy,  and  they  put 
about  threescore  hams  on  each  of  them,  a  load  of  more 
than  a  quarter  of  a  ton.  On  the  uneven  floor  it  was  a 
task  for  a  man  to  start  one  of  these  trucks,  unless  he  was 
a  giant ;  and  when  it  was  once  started  he  naturally  tried 
his  best  to  keep  it  going.  There  was  always  the  boss 
prowling  about,  and  if  there  was  a  second’s  delay  he 
would  fall  to  cursing ;  Lithuanians  and  Slovaks  and  such, 
who  could  not  understand  what  was  said  to  them,  the 
bosses  were  wont  to  kick  about  the  place  like  so  many 
dogs.  Therefore  these  trucks  went  for  the  most  part  on 
the  run  ;  and  the  predecessor  of  Jones  had  been  jammed 
against  the  wall  by  one  and  crashed  in  a  horrible  and 
nameless  manner 

All  of  these  were  sinister  incidents;  but  they  were 
trifles  compared  to  what  Jurgis  saw  with  his  own  eyes 
before  long.  One  curious  thing  he  had  noticed,  the  very 
first  day,  in  his  profession  of  shoveller  of  guts ;  which  was 
the  sharp  trick  of  the  floor-bosses  whenever  there  chanced 
to  come  a  slunk”  calf.  Any  man  who  knows  anything 
about  butchering  knows  that  the  flesh  of  a  cow  that  is 
about  to  calve,  or  has  just  calved,  is  not  fit  for  food.  A 
good  many  of  these  came  every  day  to  the  packing-houses  — 
and,  of  course,  if  they  had  chosen,  it  would  have  been 
an  easy  matter  for  the  packers  to  keep  them  till  they  were 
fit  for  food.  But  for  the  saving  of  time  and  fodder,  it  was 
the  •  ^w  that  cows  of  that  sort  came  along  with  the  others, 


74 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  whoever  noticed  it  would  tell  the  boss,  and  the  boss 
would  start  up  a  conversation  with  the  government  in- 
spector,  and  the  two  would  stroll  away.  So  in  a  trice  the 
carcass  of  the  cow  would  be  cleaned  out,  and  the  entrails 
would  have  vanished;  it  was  Jurgis’s  task  to  slide  them 
into  the  trap,  calves  and  all,  and  on  the  floor  below  they 
took  out  these  “  slunk  ”  calves,  and  butchered  them  for 
meat,  and  used  even  the  skins  of  them. 

One  day  a  man  slipped  and  hurt  his  leg ;  and  that  after« 
noon,  when  the  last  of  the  cattle  had.  been  disposed  of,  and 
the  men  were  leaving,  Jurgis  was  ordered  to  remain  and 
do  some  special  work  which  this  injured  man  had  usually 
done.  It  was  late,  almost  dark,  and  the  government  in¬ 
spectors  had  all  gone,  and  there  were  only  a  dozen  or  two 
of  men  on  the  floor.  That  day  they  had  killed  about  four 
thousand  cattle,  and  these  cattle  had  come  in  freight 
trains  from  far  states,  and  some  of  them  had  got  hurt. 
There  were  some  with  broken  legs,  and  some  with  gored 
sides ;  there  were  some  that  had  died,  from  what  cause  no 
one  could  say ;  and  they  wore/  all  to  be  disposed  of,  here 
'x  in  darkness  and  silence.  the  men  called 

them  ;  and  the  packing-houkc' had  a  special  elevator  upon 
which  they  were  raised  to  the  killing-beds,  where  the  gang 
proceeded  to  handle  them,  with  an  air  of  businesslike 
nonchalance  which  said  plainer  than  any  words  that  it  was 
a  matter  of  everyday  routine.  It  took  a  couple  of  hours 
to  get  them  out  of  the  way,  and  in  tJae  end  Jurgis  saw 
them  go  into  the  chilling-rooms  with  the  rest  of  the  meat, 
being  carefully  scattered  here  and  there  so  that  they  could 
\  not  be  identified.  When  he  came  home  that  night  he  was 
\  in  a  very  sombre  mood,  having  begun  to  see  at  last  how 
those  might  be  right,  who  had  laughed  at  him  for  his  faith 
in  America. 


CHAPTER  VI 


JuRGis  and  Ona  were  very  much  in  love;  they  had 
waited  a  long  time  —  it  was  now  well  into  the  second 
year,  and  Jurgis  judged  everything  hy  the  criterion  of  its 
helping  or  hindering  their  union.  All  his  thoughts  were 
there  ;  he  accepted  the  family  because  it  was  a  part  of 
Ona,  and  he  was  interested  in  the  house  because  it  was  to 
be  Ona’s  home.  Even  the  tricks  and  cruelties  he  saw  at 
Durham’s  had  little  meaning  for  him  just  then,  save  as 
they  might  happen  to  affect  his  future  with  Ona. 

The  marriage  would  have  been  at  once,  if  they  had  had 
their  way ;  but  this  would  mean  that  they  would  have  tff 
do  without  any  wedding-feast,  and  when  they  suggested 
this  they  came  into  conflict  with  the  old  people.  To  Teta 
Elzbieta  especially  the  very  suggestion  was  an  affliction. 
What!  she  would  cry.  To  be  married  on  the  roadside 
like  a  parcel  of  beggars!  No!  No!  —  Elzbieta  had  some 
traditions  behind  her;  she  had  been  a  person  of  impor¬ 
tance  in  her  girlhood  — had  lived  on  a  big  estate  and  had 
servants,  and  might  have  married  well  and  been  a  lady, 
but  for  the  fact  that  there  had  been  nine  daughters  and 
no  sons  in  the  family.  Even  so,  however,  she  knew  what 
was  decent,  and  clung  to  her  traditions  with  desperation. 
They  were  not  going  to  lose  all  caste,  even  if  they  bad 
come  to  be  unskilled  laborers  in  Fackingtown;  and  that 
Ona  had  even  talked  of  omitting  a  veselija  was  enough  to 
keep  her  stepmother  lying  awake  all  night.  It  was  in 
vain  for  them  to  say  that  they  had  so  few  friends  ;  they 
were  bound  to  have  friends  in  time,  and  then  the  friends 
would  talk  about  it.  They  must  not  give  up  what  was 
right  for  a  little  money  —  if  they  did,  the  money  would 
never  do  them  any  good,  they  could  depend  upon  that 

75 


76 


THE  JUNGLE 


And  Eizbieta  would  call  upon  Dede  Antanas  to  support 
her ;  there  was  a  fear  in  the  souls  of  these  two,  lest  this 
journej^  to  a  new  country  might  somehow  undermine  the 
old  home  virtues  of  their  children.  The  very  first  Sunday 
they  had  all  been  taken  to  mass  ;  and  poor  as  they  were, 
Eizbieta  had  felt  it  advisable  to  invest  a  little  of  her  re¬ 
sources  in  a  representation  of  the  babe  of  Bethlehem,  made 
in  plaster,  and  painted  in  brilliant  colors.  Though  it  was 
only  a  foot  high,  there  was  a  shrine  with  four  snow-white 
steeples,  and  the  Virgin  standing  with  her  child  in  her 
arms,  and  the  kings  and  shepherds  and  wise  men  bowing 
down  before  him.  It  had  cost  fifty  cents;  but  Eizbieta 
had  a  feeling  that  money  spent  for  such  things  was  not  to 
be  counted  too  closely,  it  would  come  back  in  hidden  ways. 
The  piece  was  beautiful  on  the  parlor  mantel,  and  one 
could  not  have  a  home  without  some  sort  of  ornament. 

The  cost  of  the  wedding-feast  would,  of  course  be  re¬ 
turned  to  them ;  but  the  problem  was  to  raise  it  even 
temporarily.  They  had  been  in  the  neighborhood  so 
short  a  time  that  they  could  not  get  much  credit,  and 
there  was  no  one  except  Szedvilas  from  whom  they  could 
borrow  even  a  little.  Evening  after  evening  Jurgis  and 
Ona  would  sit  and  figure  the  expenses,  calculating  the 
term  of  their  separation.  They  could  not  possibly  man¬ 
age  it  decently  for  less  than  two  hundred  dollars,  and 
even  though  they  were  welcome  to  count  in  the  whole 
of  the  earnings  of  Marija  and  Jonas,  as  a  loan,  they  could 
not  hope  to  raise  this  sum  in  less  than  four  or  five  months. 
So  Ona  began  thinking  of  seeking  employment  herself,  say¬ 
ing  that  if  she  had  even  ordinarily  good  luck,  she  might  be 
able  to  take  two  months  off  the  time.  They  were  just 
beginning  to  adjust  themselves  to  this  necessity,  when 
out  of  the  clear  sky  there  fell  a  thunderbolt  upon  them 
— -a  calamity  that  scattered  all  their  hopes  to  the  four 
winds. 

About  a  block  away  from  them  there  lived  another 
Lithuanian  family,  consisting  of  an  elderly  widow  and 
one  grown  son;  their  name  was  Majauszkis,  and  one 
friends  struck  ud  an  acquaintance  with  them  before  long. 


THE  JUNGLE 


77 


One  evening  they  came  over  for  a  visit,  and  naturally  the 
first  subject  upon  which  the  conversation  turned  was  the 
neighborhood  and  its  history ;  and  then  Grandmother 
Majauszkiene,  as  the  old  lady  was  called,  proceeded  to 
recite  to  them  a  string  of  horrors  that  fairly  froze  their 
blood.  She  was  a  wrinkled-up  and  wizened  personage — ■ 
she  must  have  been  eighty  —  and  as  she  mumbled  the  grim 
story  through  her  toothless  gums,  she  seemed  a  very  old 
witch  to  them.  Grandmother  Majauszkiene  had  lived  in 
the  midst  of  misfortune  so  long  that  it  had  come  to  be  her 
element,  and  she  talked  about  starvation,  sickness,  and  death 
as  other  people  might  about  weddings  and  holidays. 

The  thing  came  gradually.  In  the  first  place  as  to  the 
house  they  had  bought,  it  was  not  new  at  all,  as  they  had 
supposed ;  it  vras  about  fifteen  years  old,  and  there  was 
nothing  new  upon  it  but  the  paint,  which  was  so  bad  that 
it  needed  to  be  put  on  new  every  year  or  two.  The  house 
was  one  of  a  whole  row  that  was  built  by  a  company  which 
existed  to  make  money  by  swindling  poor  people.  The 
family  had  paid  fifteen  hundred  dollars  for  it,  and  it  had 
not  cost  the  builders  five  hundred,  when  it  was  new  — 
Grandmother  Majauszkiene  knew  that  because  her  son 
belonged  co  a  political  organization  with  a  contractor  who 
put  up  exactly  such  houses.  They  used  the  very  flim¬ 
siest  and  cheapest  material ;  they  built  the  houses  a  dozen 
at  a  time,  and  they  cared  about  nothing  at  all  except  the 
outside  shine.  The  family  could  take  her  word  as  to  the 
trouble  they  would  have,  for  she  had  been  through  it  all 
■ — she  and  her  son  had  bought  their  house  in  exactly  the 
same  way.  They  had  fooled  the  company,  however,  for 
her  son  was  a  skilled  man,  who  made  as  high  as  a  hundred 
dollars  a  month,  and  as  he  had  had  sense  enough  nos  to 
marry,  they  had  been  able  to  pay  for  the  house. 

Grandmother  Majauszkiene  saw  that  her  friends  were 
puzzled  at  this  remark ;  they  did  not  quite  see  how  pay¬ 
ing  for  the  house  was  “fooling  the  company.”  Evidently 
they  were  very  inexperienced.  Cheap  as  the  houses  were, 
they  were  sold  with  the  idea  that  the  people  who  bought 
them  would  not  be  able  to  pay  for  them.  When '  they 


78 


THE  JUNGLE 


failed  —  if  it  were  only  by  a  single  month — they  would 
lose  the  house  and  all  that  they  had  paid  on  it,  and  then 
the  company  would  sell  it  over  again.  And  did  they  often 
get  a  chance  to  do  that?  Dieve!  (Grandmother  Majaus- 
zkiene  raised  her  hands.)  They  did  it— -how  often  no 
one  could  say,  but  certainly  more  than  half  of  the  time. 
They  might  ask  any  one  who  knew  anything  at  all  about 
Packingtown  as  to  that;  she  had  been  living  here  ever 
since  this  house  was  built,  and  she  could  tell  them  all 
about  it.  And  had  it  ever  been  sold  before?  Susimilkie! 
Why,  since  it  had  been  built,  no  less  than  four  families  that 
their  informant  could  name  had  tried  to  buy  it  and  failed. 
She  would  tell  them  a  little  about  it. 

The  first  family  had  been  Germans.  The  families  had 
a11  been  of  different  nationalities — there  had  been  a  repre- 
,jeutative  of  several  races  that  had  displaced  each  other  in 
Are  stockyards.  Grandmother  Majauszkiene  had  come  to 
America  with  her  son  at  a  time  when  so  far  as  slie  knew 
there  was  only  one  other  Lithuanian  family  in  the  district ; 
the  workers  had  all  been  Germans  then  —  skilled  cattle- 
butcners  that  the  packers  had  brought  from  abroad  to 
start  the  business.  Afterward,  as  cheaper  labor  had 
come,  these  Germans  had  moved  away.  The  next  were 
the  Irish  —  there  had  been  six  or  eight  years  when 
Packingtown  had  been  a  regular  Irish  city.  There  were 
a  few  colonies  of  them  still  here,  enough  to  run  all  the 
unions  and  the  police  force  and  get  ail  the  graft ;  but 
the  most  of  those  who  were  working  in  the  packing¬ 
houses  had  gone  away  at  the  next  drop  in  wages  — 
after  the  big  strike.  The  Bohemians  had  come  then,  and 
after  them  the  Poles.  People  said  that  old  man  Durham 
himself  was  responsible  for  these  immigrations;  he  had 
sworn  that  he  would  fix  the  people  of  Packingtown  so 
that  they  would  never  again  call  a  strike  on  him,  and  so 
he  had  sent  his  agents  into  every  city  and  village  in 
Europe  to  spread  the  tale  of  the  chances  of  work  and 
high  wages  at  the  stockyards.  The  people  had  come  ia 
hordes ;  and  old  Durham  had  squeezed  them  tighter  and 
tighter,  speeding  them  up  and  grinding  them  to  pieces 


THE  JUNGLE 


79 


ind  sending  for  new  ones.  The  Poles,  who  had  come  by 
tens  of  thousands,  had  been  driven  to  the  wall  by  the 
Lithuanians,  and  now  the  Lithuanians  were  giving  way 
to  the  Slovaks.  Who  there  was  poorer  and  more  miser¬ 
able  than  the  Slovaks,  Grandmother  Majauszkiene  had 
no  idea,  but  the  packers  would  find  them,  never  fear. 
It  was  easy  to  bring  them,  for  wages  were  really  much 
higlier,  and  it  was  only  when  it  was  too  late  that  the 
poor  people  found  out  that  everything  else  was  higher 
too.  They  were  like  rats  in  a  trap,  that  was  the  truth; 
and  more  of  them  were  piling  in  every  day.  By  and  by 
they  would  have  their  revenge,  though,  for  the  thing 
was  getting  beyond  human  endurance,  and  the  people 
would  rise  and  murder  the  packers.  Grandmother 
Majauszkiene  was  a  socialist,  or  some  such  strange 
thing ;  another  son  of  hers  was  working  in  the  mines 
of  Siberia,  and  the  old  lady  herself  had  made  speeches 
in  her  time  —  which  made  her  seem  all  the  more  terrible 
to  her  present  auditors. 

They  called  her  back  to  the  story  of  the  house.  The 
German  family  had  been  a  good  sort.  To  be  sure  there 
had  been  a  great  many  of  them,  which  was  a  common  fail¬ 
ing  in  Paekingtown;  but  they  had  worked  hard,  and  the 
father  had  been  a  steady  man,  and  they  had  a  good  deal 
more  than  half  paid  for  the  house.  But  he  had  been 
killed  in  an  elevator  accident  in  Durham’s. 

Then  there  had  come  the  Irish,  and  there  had  been  lots 
of  them,  too;  the  husband  drank  and  beat  the  children  — 
the  neighbors  could  hear  them  shrieking  any  night.  They 
were  behind  with  their  rent  all  the  time,  but  the  company 
was  good  to  them  ;  there  was  some  politics  back  of  that. 
Grandmother  Majauszkiene  could  not  say  just  what,  but 
the  Lafi'ertys  had  belonged  to  the  “War  Whoop  League,” 
which  was  a  sort  of  political  club  of  all  the  thugs  and 
rowdies  in  the  district ;  and  if  you  belonged  to  that,  you 
could  never  be  arrested  for  anything.  Once  upon  a  time 
old  Lafferty  had  been  caught  with  a  gang  that  had  stolen 
cows  from  several  of  the  poor  people  of  the  neighborhood 
and  butchered  them  in  an  old  shanty  back  of  the  yards 


80 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  sold  them.  He  had  been  in  jail  only  three  days  foi 
it,  and  had  come  out  laughing,  and  had  not  even  lost  his 
place  in  the  packing-house.  He  had  gone  all  to  ruin  with 
the  drink,  however,  and  lost  his  power ;  one  of  his  sons, 
who  was  a  good  man,  had  kept  him  and  the  family  up  for 
a  year  or  two,  but  then  he  had  got  siek  with  consumption. 

I  That  was  another  thing.  Grandmother  Majauzskiene 

I  interrupted  herself  —  this  house  was  unlucky.  Every 
'A  family  that  lived  in  it,  some  one  was  sure  to  get  con¬ 
sumption.  Nobody  could  tell  why  that  was;  there  must 
be  something  about  a  house,  or  the  way  it  w'^as  built  — 
some  folks  said  it  was  because  the  building  had  been 
begun  in  the  dark  of  the  moon.  There  were  dozens  of 
houses  that  way  in  Packingtown.  Sometimes  there  would 
be  a  particular  room  that  you  could  point  out  —  if  any¬ 
body  slept  in  that  room  he  was  just  as  good  as  dead. 
With  this  house  it  had  been  the  Irish  first*,  and  then  a 
Bohemian  family  had  lost  a  child  of  it  —  though,  to  be 
sure,  that  was  uncertain,  since  it  was  hard  to  tell  what 
was  the  matter  with  children  who  worked  in  the  yards. 
In  those  days  there  had  been  no  law  about  the  age  of 
children  —  the  packers  had  worked  all  but  the  babies. 
At  this  remark  the  family  looked  puzzled,  and  Grand¬ 
mother  Majauszkiene  again  had  to  make  an  explanation  — 
that  it  was  against  the  law  for  children  to  work  before 
they  were  sixteen.  What  was  the  sense  of  that?  they 
asked.  They  had  been  thinking  of  letting  little  Stani- 
slovas  go  to  work.  Well,  there  was  no  need  to  worry. 
Grandmother  Majauszkiene  said —  the  law  made  no  differ¬ 
ence  except  that  it  forced  people  to  lie  about  the  ages  of 
their  children.  One  would  like  to  know  what  the  law¬ 
makers  expected  them  to  do ;  there  were  families  that  had 
no  possible  means  of  support  except  the  children,  and 
the  law  provided  them  no  other  way  of  getting  a  living. 
Very  often  a  man  could  get  no  work  in  Packingtown  for 
months,  while  a  child  could  go  and  get  a  place  easily; 
there  was  always  some  new  machine,  by  which  the  packers 
could  get  as  much  work  out  of  a  child  as  they  had  been  able 
to  get  out  of  a  man,  and  for  a  third  of  the  pay. 


THE  JU]N(iE® 


81 


To  come  back  to  the  house  again,  it  was  the  woman  of 
the  next  family  that  had  died.  That  was  after  they  had 
been  there  nearly  four  years,  and  this  woman  had  had 
twins  regularly  every  year  —  and  there  had  been  more 
than  you  could  count  when  they  moved  in.  After  she 
died  the  man  would  go  to  work  all  day  and  leave  them 
to  shift  for  themselves  —  the  neighbors  would  help  them 
now  and  then,  for  they  would  almost  freeze  to  death.  At 
the  end  there  were  three  days  that  they  were  alone,  be¬ 
fore  it  was  found  out  that  the  father  was  dead.  He  was 
a  “floorsman  ”  at  Jones’s,  and  a  wounded  steer  had  broken 
loose  and  mashed  him  against  a  pillar.  Then  the  children 
had  been  taken  away,  and  the  company  had  sold  the  house 
that  very  same  week  to  a  party  of  emigrants. 

So  this  grim  old  woman  went  on  with  her  tale  of  hor¬ 
rors.  How  much  of  it  was  exaggeration  —  who  could 
tell?  It  was  only  too  plausible.  There  was  that  about 
consumption,  for  instance.  They  knew  nothing  about 
consumption  whatever,  except  that  it  made  people  cough ; 
and  for  two  weeks  they  had  been  worrying  about  a  cough- 
ing-spell  of  Antanas.  It  seemed  to  shake  him  all  over, 
and  it  never  stopped  ;  you  could  see  a  red  stain  wherever 
he  had  spit  upon  the  floor. 

And  yet  all  these  things  were  as  nothing  to  what  came 
a  little  later.  They  had  begun  to  question  the  old  lady 
as  to  why  one  family  had  been  unable  to  pay,  trying  to 
show  her  by  figures  that  it  ought  to  have  been  possible  ; 
and  Grandmother  Majauszkiene  had  disputed  their  figures 
—  “You  say  twelve  dollars  a  month;  but  that  does  not 
include  the  interest.” 

Then  they  stared  at  her.  “  Interest  I  ”  they  cried. 

“  Interest  on  the  money  you  still  owe,”  she  answered. 

“  But  we  don’t  have  to  pay  any  interest !  ”  they  ex¬ 
claimed,  three  or  four  at  once.  “We  only  have  to  pay 
twelve  dollars  each  month.” 

And  for  this  she  laughed  at  them.  “  You  are  like  ail 
the  rest,”  she  said;  “they  trick  you  and  eat  you  alive. 
They  never  sell  the  houses  without  interest  Get  youi 
deed,  and  see.” 


82 


THE  JUNGLE 


rhen,  with  a  horrible  sinkiug  of  the  heart,  Teta  Elzbieta 
uuiocked  her  bureau  end  brought  out  the  paper  that  had 
already  caused  them  so  many  agonies.  Now  they  sat 
round,  scarcely  breathing,  while  the  old  lady,  who  could 

read  English,  ran  over  it.  Yes,”  she  said,  finally,  “  here 
it  is,  of  course  :  ‘  With  interest  thereon  monthly,  at  the 
rate  of  seven  per  cent  per  annum.’  ” 

And  tiiere  followed  a  dead  silence.  “  What  does  that 
mean  ?  ”  asked  Jurgis  finally,  almost  in  a  whisper. 

“  That  means,”  replied  the  other,  “  that  you  have  to 
pay  them  seven  dollars  next  month,  as  well  as  the  twelve 
dollars.” 

Then  again  there  was  not  a  sound.  It  was  sickening, 
like  a  nightmare,  in  which  suddenly  something  gives  way 
beneath  you,  and  you  feel  yourself  sinking,  sinking,  down 
into  bottomless  abysses.  As  if  in  a  flash  of  lightning  they 
saw  themselves victims  of  a  relentless  fate,  cornered, 
trapped,  in  the  grip  of  destruction.  All  the  fair  struc¬ 
ture  of  their  hopes  came  crashing  about  their  ears. — And 
all  the  time  the  old  woman  was  going  on  talking. 
They  wished  that  she  would  be  still ;  her  voice  sounded 
like  the  croaking  of  some  dismal  raven.  Jurgis  sat  with 
his  hands  clenched  and  beads  of  perspiration  on  his  fore* 
head,  and  there  was  a  great  lump  in  Ona’s  throat,  choking 
her.  Then  suddenly  Teta  Elzbieta  broke  the  silence  with 
a  wail,  and  Marija  began  to  wring  her  hands  and  sob, 
^'•Ai!  Ai!  Beda  man!'” 

All  their  outcry  did  them  no  good,  of  course.  There 
sat  Grandmother  Majauszkiene,  unrelenting,  typifying 
fate.  ISI  o,  of  course  it  was  not  fair,  but  then  fairness  had 
nothing  to  do  with  it.  And  of  course  they  had  not  known 
it.  They  had  not  been  intended  to  know  it.  But  it  was 
in  the  deed,  and  that  was  all  that  was  necessary,  as  they 
would  find  when  the  time  came. 

Somehow  or  other  they  got  rid  of  their  guest,  and  then 
they  passed  a  night  of  lamentation.  The  children  woke  up 
and  found  out  that  something  was  wrong,  and  they  wailed 
and  would  not  be  comforted.  In  the  morning,  of  course, 
most  of  them  had  to  go  to  work,  the  packing-houses  woulJ 


THE  JUNGLE 


not  stop  for  their  sorrows ;  but  by  seven  o’clock  On  a  and 
her  stepmother  were  standing  at  the  door  of  the  office  of 
the  agent.  Yes,  he  told  them,  when  he  came,  it  was  quite 
true  that  they  would  have  to  pay  interest.  And  then 
Teta  Elzbieta  broke  forth  into  protestations  and  reproaches, 
so  that  the  people  outside  stopped  and  peered  in  at  the  win¬ 
dow.  The  agent  was  as  bland  as  ever.  He  was  deeply 
pained,  he  said.  He  had  not  told  them,  simply  because 
he  had  supposed  they  would  understand  that  they  had  to 
pay  interest  upon  their  debt,  as  a  matter  of  course. 

So  they  came  away,  and  Ona  went  down  to  the  yards, 
and  at  noon-time  saw  Jurgis  and  told  him.  Jurgis  took 
it  stolidly  —  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  it  by  this  time. 
It  was  part  of  fate  ;  they  would  manage  it  somehow  — 
he  made  his  usual  answer,  “I  will  work  harder.”  It 
would  upset  their  plans  for  a  time  ;  and  it  would  perhaps 
be  necessary  for  Ona  to  get  work  after  all.  Then  Ona 
added  that  Teta  Elzbieta  had  decided  that  little  Stani- 
slovas  would  have  to  work  too.  It  was  not  fair  to  let 
J urgis  and  her  support  the  family  —  the  family  would 
have  to  help  as  it  could.  Previously  Jurgis  had  scouted 
this  idea,  but  now  knit  his  brows  and  nodded  his  bead 
slowly  —  yes,  perhaps  it  would  be  best;  they  would  all 
have  to  make  some  sacrifices  now. 

So  Ona  set  out  that  day  to  hunt  for  work  ;  and  at  night 
Marija  came  home  saying  that  she  had  met  a  girl  named 
Jasaityte  who  had  a  friend  that  worked  in  one  of  the 
wrapping-rooms  in  Browm’s,  and  might  get  a  place  for 
Ona  there ;  only  the  forelady  was  the  kind  that  takes 
presents  —  it  was  no  use  for  any  one  to  ask  her  for  a  place 
unless  at  the  same  time  they  slipped  a  ten-dollar  bill  into 
her  hand.  Jurgis  was  not  in  the  least  surprised  at  this 
now  —  he  merely  asked  what  the  wages  of  the  place  would 
be.  So  negotiations  were  opened,  and  after  an  interview 
Ona  came  home  and  reported  that  the  forelady  seemed  to 
like  her,  and  had  said  that,  while  she  was  not  sure,  she 
thought  she  might  be  able  to  put  her  at  work  sewing  covers 
on  hams,  a  job  at  which  she  could  earn  as  rarch  as  eight 
or  ten  dollars  a  week.  That  was  a  bid,  so  Marija  reported, 


THE  JUNGEE 


after  consalting  her  friend  ;  and  then  there  was  an  anxious 
conference  at  home.  The  work  was  done  in  one  of  the 
collars,  and  Jurgis  did  not  want  Ona  to  worx  in  such  a 
place  ;  but  then  it  was  easy  work,  and  one  could  not  haye 
everything.  So  in  the  end  Ona,  with  a  ten-dollar  bill 
burning  a  hole  in  her  palm,  had  another  interview  with 
the  forelady. 

Meantime  Teta  Elzbieta  had  taken  Stanislovas  to  the 
priest  and  gotten  a  certificate  to  the  effect  that  he  was 
two  years  older  than  he  was  ;  and  with  it  the  little  boy 
now  sallied  forth  to  make  his  fortune  in  the  world.  It 
chanced  that  Durham  had  just  put  in  a  wonderful  new 
lard-machine,  and  when  the  special  policeman  in  front  of 
the  time-station  saw  Stanislovas  and  his  document,  he 
smiled  to  himself  and  told  him  to  go  —  “  Czia  1  Czia  I  ” 
pointing.  And  so  Stanislovas  went  down  a  long  stone 
corridor,  and  up  a  flight  of  stairs,  which  took  him  into  a 
room  lighted  by  electricity,  with  the  new  machines  fo' 
filling  lard-cans  at  work  in  it.  The  lard  was  finished  on 
the  floor  above,  and  it  came  in  little  jets,  like  beautiful, 
wriggling,  snow-white  snakes  of  unpleasant  odor.  There 
were  several  kinds  and  sizes  of  jets,  and  after  a  certain 
precise  quantity  had  come  out,  each  stopped  automatically, 
and  the  wonderful  machine  made  a  turn,  and  took  the  can 
under  another  jet,  and  so  on,  until  it  was  filled  neatly  to 
the  brim,  and  pressed  tightly,  and  smoothed  off.  To 
attend  to  all  this  and  fill  several  hundred  cans  of  lard  per 
hour,  there  were  necessary  two  human  creatures,  one  of 
whom  knew  how  to  place  an  empty  lard-can  on  a  certain 
spot  every  few  seconds,  and  the  other  of  whom  knew  how 
to  take  a  full  lard-can  off  a  certain  spot  every  few  seconds 
and  set  it  upon  a  tray. 

And  so,  after  little  Stanislovas  had  stood  gazing  timidly 
about  hiin  for  a  few  minutes,  a  man  approached  him,  and 
asked  what  he  wanted,  to  which  Stanislovas  said,  “Job.’* 
Then  the  man  said  “  How  old  ?  ”  and  Stanislovas  answered, 
“Sixtin.”  Once  or  twice  every  year  a  state  inspector 
would  come  wandering  through  the  packing-plants,  ask¬ 
ing  a  child  here  and  there  how  old  he  was ;  and  so  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


85 


packers  were  very  careful  to  comply  with  the  law,  which 
cost  them  as  much  trouble  as  was  now  involved  in  the 
boss’s  taking  the  document  from  the  little  boy,  and  glanc* 
ing  at  it,  and  then  sending  it  to  the  office  to  be  filed  away 
Then  he  set  some  one  else  at  a  different  job,  and  showea 
the  lad  how  to  place  a  lard-can  every  time  the  empty  arm 
of  the  remorseless  machine  came  to  him  ;  and  so  was  de¬ 
cided  the  place  in  the  universe  of  little  Stanislovas,  and 
his  destiny  till  the  end  of  his  days.  Hour  after  hour,  day 
after  day,  year  after  year,  it  was  fated  that  he  should 
stand  upon  a  certain  square  foot  of  floor  from  seven  in  the 
morning  until  noon,  and  again  from  half-past  twelve  till 
half-past  five,  making  never  a  motion  and  thinking  never 
a  thought,  save  for  the  setting  of  lard-cans.  In  summer 
the  stench  of  the  warm  lard  would  be  nauseating,  and  in 
winter  the  cans  would  all  but  freeze  to  his  naked  little 
fingers  in  the  unheated  cellar.  Half  the  year  it  would  be 
dark  as  night  when  he  went  in  to  work,  and  dark  as  night 
again  when  he  came  out,  and  so  he  would  never  know  what 
the  sun  looked  like  on  week-days.  And  for  this,  at  the  end 
of  the  week,  he  would  carry  home  three  dollars  to  his 
family,  being  his  pay  at  the  rate  of  five  cents  per  hour — 
just  about  his  proper  share  of  the  total  earnings  of  the 
million  and  three-quarters  of  children  who  are  now  en¬ 
gaged  in  earning  their  livings  in  the  United  States. 

And  meantime,  because  they  were  young,  and  hope  is 
not  to  be  stifled  before  its  time,  Jurgis  and  Ona  were 
again  calculating  ;  for  they  had  discovered  that  the  wages 
of  Stanislovas  would  a  little  more  than  pay  the  interest, 
which  left  them  just  about  as  they  had  been  before  1  It 
woidd  be  but  fair  to  them  to  say  that  the  little  boy  was 
delighted  with  his  work,  and  at  the  idea  of  earning  a  lot 
of  money  ;  and  also  that  the  two  were  very  much  in  love 
with  each  other. 


CHAPTER  Vn 


All  summer  long  the  family  toiled,  and  in  the  fall 
they  had  money  enough  for  Jurgis  and  Ona  to  be  married 
according  to  home  traditions  of  decency.  In  the  latter 
part  of  November  they  hired  a  hall,  and  invited  all  their 
new  acquaintances,  who  came  and  left  them  over  a  hundred 
dollars  in  debt. 

It  was  a  bitter  and  cruel  experience,  and  it  plunged 
them  into  an  agony  of  despair.  Such  a  time,  of  all  times, 
for  them  to  have  it,  when  their  hearts  were  made  tender  I 
Such  a  pitiful  beginning  it  was  for  their  married  life  ; 
they  loved  each  other  so,  and  they  could  not  have  the 
briefest  respite  I  It  was  a  time  when  everything  cried 
out  to  them  that  they  ought  to  be  happy  ;  when  wonder 
burned  in  their  hearts,  and  leaped  into  flame  at  the  slight* 
est  breath.  They  were  shaken  to  the  depths  of  them, 
with  the  awe  of  love  realized  —  and  was  it  so  very  weak 
of  them  that  they  cried  out  for  a  little  peace  ?  They  had 
opened  their  hearts,  like  flowers  to  the  springtime,  and 
'•ibe  merciless  winter  had  fallen  upon  them.  They  won¬ 
dered  if  ever  any  love  that  had  blossomed  in  the  world 
had  been  so  crushed  and  trampled  1 

Over  them,  relentless  and  savage,  there  cracked  the 
lash  of  want  ;  the  morning  after  the  wedding  it  sought 
them  as  they  slept,  and  drove  them  out  before  daybreak  to 
work.  Ona  was  scarcely  able  to  stand  with  exhaustion  } 
but  if  she  were  to  lose  her  place  they  v/ould  be  ruined,  and 
she  would  surely  lose  it  if  she  were  not  on  time  that  day. 
They  all  had  to  go,  even  little  Stanislovas,  who  was  ill 
from  overindulgence  in  sausages  and  sarsaparilla.  All 
that  day  he  stood  at  his  lard-machine,  rocking  unsteadily, 
his  eyes  closing  in  spite  of  him  ;  and  he  all  but  lost  hia 

86 


THE  JUNGLE 


87 


place  even  so,  for  the  foreman  booted  him  twice  to  waken 
him. 

It  was  fully  a  week  before  they  were  all  normal  again, 
and  meantime,  with  whining  children  and  cross  adults, 
the  house  was  not  a  pleasant  place  to  live  in.  Jurgis  lost 
his  temper  very  little,  however,  all  things  considered.  It 
was  because  of  Ona ;  the  least  glance  at  her  was  always 
enough  to  make  him  control  himself.  She  was  so  sensi¬ 
tive  —  she  was  not  fitted  for  such  a  life  as  this  ;  and  a 
hundred  times  a  day,  when  he  thought  of  her,  he  would 
clench  his  hands  and  fling  himself  again  at  the  task  be¬ 
fore  him.  She  was.  too  good  for  him,  he  told  himself, 
and  he  was  afraid,  because  she  was  his.  So  long  he 
had  hungered  to  possess  her,  but  now  that  the  time  had 
come  he  knew  that  he  had  not  earned  the  right;  that 
she  trusted  him  so  was  all  her  own  simple  goodness,  and 
no  virtue  of  his.  Bat  he  was  resolved  that  she  should 
never  find  this  out,  and  so  was  always  on  the  watch  to 
see  that  he  did  not  betray  any  of  his  ugly  self ;  he 
would  take  care  even  in  little  matters,  such  as  his  manners, 
and  his  habit  of  swearing  when  things  went  wrong.  The 
tears  came  so  easily  into  Ona’s  eyes,  and  she  would  look 
at  him  so  appealingly  —  it  kept  Jurgis  quite  busy  making 
resolutions,  in  addition  to  all  the  other  things  he  had  on 
his  mind.  It  was  true  that  more  things  were  going  on  at 
this  time  in  the  mind  of  Jurgis  than  ever  had  in  all  his 
life  before. 

He  had  to  protect  her,  to  do  battle  for  her  against  the 
horror  he  saw  about  them.  He  was  all  that  she  had  to 
look  to,  and  if  he  failed  she  would  be  lost ;  he  would  wrap 
his  arms  about  her,  and  try  to  hide  her  from  the  world. 
He  had  learned  the  ways  of  things  about  him  nov/.  It 
was  a  war  of  each  against  all,  and  the  devil  take  the  hind¬ 
most.  You  did  not  give  feasts  to  other  people,  you  waited 
for  them  to  give  feasts  to  you.  You  went  about  with 
your  soul  full  of  suspicion  and  hatred ;  you  understood 
that  you  were  environed  by  hostile  powers  that  were  trying 
to  get  your  mone}'’,  and  who  used  all  the  virtues  to  bait 
their  traps  with.  The  storekeepers  plastered  up  their 


88 


THE  JUNGLE 


windows  with  all  sorts  or  lies  to  entice  you  ;  the  very 
fences  by  the  wayside,  the  lamp-posts  and  telegraph-poles, 
were  pasted  over  Avith  lies.  The  great  corporation  which 
employed  you  lied  to  you,  and  lied  to  the  whole  country-— 
from  top  to  bottom  it  was  nothing  but  one  gigantic  lie. 

So  Jurgis  said  that  he  understood  it;  and  yet  it  was 
really  pitiful,  for  the  struggle  was  so  unfair  —  some  had 
so  much  the  advantage  1  Here  he  was,  for  instance,  vow¬ 
ing  upon  his  knees  that  he  would  save  Ona  from  harm,  and 
only  a  week  later  she  was  suffering  atrociously,  and  from 
the  blow  of  an  enemy  that  he  could  not  possibly  have 
thwarted.  There  came  a  day  when  the  rain  fell  in  tor¬ 
rents  ;  and  it  being  December,  to  be  wet  with  it  and  have 
to  sit  all  day  long  in  one  of  the  cold  cellars  of  Brown’s  was 
no  laughing  matter.  Ona  was  a  working-girl,  and  did  not 
own  waterproofs  and  such  things,  and  so  Jurgis  took  her 
and  put  her  on  the  street-car.  Now  it  chanced  that  this 
car-line  was  owned  by  gentlemen  who  were  trying  to  make 
money.  And  the  city  having  passed  an  ordinance  requir¬ 
ing  them  to  give  transfers,  they  had  fallen  into  a  rage ; 
and  first  they  had  made  a  rule  that  transfers  could  be  had 
only  when  the  fare  was  paid;  and  later,  growing  still  uglier, 
they  had  made  another  —  that  the  passenger  must  ask  for 
the  transfer,  the  conductor  was  not  allowed  to  offer  it. 
Now  Ona  had  been  told  that  she  was  to  get  a  transfer ;  but 
it  was  not  her  way  to  speak  up,  and  so  she  merely  waited, 
following  the  conductor  about  with  her  eyes,  wondering 
when  he  would  think  of  her.  When  at  last  the  time  came  for 
her  to  get  out,  she  asked  for  the  transfer,  and  was  refused. 
Not  knowing  what  to  make  of  this,  she  began  to  argue  with 
the  conductor,  in  a  language  of  which  he  did  not  under¬ 
stand  a  word.  After  warning  her  several  times,  he  pulled 
the  bell  and  the  car  went  on  —  at  which  Ona  burst  into 
tears.  At  the  next  corner  she  got  out,  of  course ;  and  as 
she  had  no  mere  money,  she  had  to  walk  the  rest  of  the 
way  to  the  yards  in  the  pouring  rain.  And  so  all  day  long 
she  sat  shivering,  and  came  home  at  night  with  her  teeth 
chattering  and  pains  in  her  head  and  back.  For  two  weeks 
afterward  she  suffered  cruelly  —  and  yet  every  day  she 


THE  JUNGLE 


89 


had  to  drag  herself  to  her  work.  The  forewoman  was 
especially  severe  with  Oiia,  because  she  believed  that  she 
was  obstinate  on  account  of  having  been  refused  a  holiday 
the  day  after  her  wedding.  Ona  had  an  idea  that  her 
“  forelady  ”  did  nut  like  to  have  her  girls  marry  —  perhaps 
because  she  was  old  and  ugly  and  unmarried  herself. 

There  were  many  such  dangers,  in  which  the  odds  were 
all  against  them.  Their  children  were  not  as  well  as  they 
had  been  at  home ;  but  how  could  they  know  that  there  was 
no  sewer  to  their  house,  and  that  the  drainage  of  fifteen 
years  was  in  a  cesspool  under  it?  How  could  they  know 
that  the  pale  blue  milk  that  they  bought  around  the  corner 
was  watered,  and  doctored  with  formaldehyde  besides? 
When  the  children  were  not  well  at  home,  Teta  Elzbieta 
would  gather  herbs  and  cure  them  ;  now  she  was  obliged 
to  go  to  the  drug-store  and  buy  extracts  —  and  how  was 
she  to  know  that  they  were  all  adulterated?  How  could 
they  find  out  that  their  tea  and  coffee,  their  sugar  and  flour, 
had  been  doctored ;  that  their  canned  peas  had  been  colored 
with  copper  salts,  and  their  fruit  jams  with  aniline  dyes? 
And  even  if  they  had  known  it,  what  good  would  it  have 
done  them,  since  there  was  no  place  within  miles  of  them 
where  any  other  sort  was  to  be  had?  The  bitter  winter 
was  coming,  and  they  had  to  save  money  to  get  more  cloth¬ 
ing  and  bedding  ;  but  it  would  not  matter  in  the  least  how 
much  they  saved,  they  cotdd  not  get  anything  to  keep 
them  warm.  All  the  clothing  that  was  to  be  had  in  the 
stores  was  made  of  cotton  and  shoddy,  which  is  made  by 
tearing  old  clothes  to  pieces  and  weaving  the  fibre  again. 
If  they  paid  higher  prices,  they  might  get  frills  and  fanci¬ 
ness,  or  be  cheated ;  but  genuine  quality  they  could  not 
obtain  for  love  nor  money.  A  young  friend  of  Szedvilas’s, 
recently  come  from  abroad,  had  become  a  clerk  in  a  store 
on  Ashland  Avenue,  and  he  narrated  with  glee  a  trick 
that  had  been  played  upon  an  unsuspecting  countryman 
by  his  boss.  The  customer  had  desired  to  purchase  an 
alarm-clock,  and  the  boss  had  shown  him  two  exactly  simi¬ 
lar,  telling  him  that  the  price  of  one  was  a  dollar  and  of 
othe>-  »  dollar  seventy-five.  Upon  being  asked  whaf 


7 


90 


THE  JUiNGLE 


the  difference  was,  the  man  had  wound  up  the  first  half¬ 
way  and  the  second  all  the  way,  and  showed  the  customer 
how  the  latter  made  twice  as  much  noise  ;  upon  which  the 
customer  remarked  that  he  was  a  sound  sleeper,  and  had 
better  take  the  more  expensive  clock  I 

There  is  a  poet  who  sings  that 

‘  Deeper  their  heart  grows  and  nobler  their  bearing, 

Whose  youth  in  the  hres  of  anguish  hath  died.” 

But  it  is  not  likely  that  he  had  reference  to  the  kind  of  an¬ 
guish  that  comes  with  destitution,  that  is  so  endlessly  bitter 
and  cruel,  and  yet  so  sordid  and  petty,  so  ugly,  so  humiliat¬ 
ing-unredeemed  by  the  slightest  touch  of  dignity  or  even 
of  pathos.  It  IS  a  kind  of  anguish  that  poets  have  not 
commonly  dealt  with ;  its  very  words  are  not  admitted  into 
the  vocabulary  of  poets  —  the  details  of  it  cannot  be  told 
in  polite  society  at  all.  How,  for  instance,  could  any  one 
expect  to  excite  sympathy  among  lovers  of  good  literature 
by  telling  how  a  family  found  their  home  alive  with  ver¬ 
min,  and  of  all  the  suffering  and  inconvenience  and  hu¬ 
miliation  they  were  put  to,  and  the  hard-earned  money 
they  spent,  in  efforts  to  get  rid  of  them?  After  long  hesi¬ 
tation  and  uncertainty  they  paid  twenty-five  cents  for  a 
big  package  of  insect-powder — a  patent  preparation  which 
chanced  to'be  ninety-five  per  cent  gypsum,  a  harmless  earth 
which  had  cost  about  two  cents  to  prepare.  Of  course  it 
had  not  the  least  effect,  except  upon  a  few  roaches  which 
had  the  misfortune  to  drink  water  after  eating  it,  and  so 
got  their  inwards  set  in  a  coating  of  plaster  of  Paris.  The 
family,  having  no  idea  of  this,  and  no  more  money  to  throw 
away,  had  nothing  to  do  but  give  up  and  submit  to  one 
more  misery  for  the  rest  of  their  days. 

Then  there  was  old  Antanas.  The  winter  came,  and 
the  place  where  he  worked  was  a  dark,  unheated  cellar, 
where  you  could  see  your  breath  all  day,  and  where  your 
fingers  sometimes  tried  to  freeze.  So  the  old  man’s  cough 
grew  every  day  worse,  until  there  came  a  time  when  it 
hardly  ever  stopped,  and  he  had  become  a  nuisance  about 


THE  JUNGLE 


91 


the  place.  Then,  too,  a  still  more  dreadful  thing  hap¬ 
pened  to  him ;  he  worked  in  a  place  where  his  feet  were 
soaked  in  chemicals,  and  it  was  not  long  before  they  had 
eaten  through  his  new  boots.  Then  sores  began  to  break 
out  on  his  feet,  and  grow  worse  and  worse.  Whether  it 
was  that  his  blood  was  bad,  or  there  had  been  a  cut,  he 
could  not  say;  but  he  asked  the  men  about  it,  and  learned 
that  it  was  a  regular  thing  —  it  was  the  saltpetre.  Every 
one  felt  it,  sooner  or  later,  and  then  it  was  all  up  with  him, 
at  least  for  that  sort  of  work.  The  sores  would  never 
heal  —  in  the  end  his  toes  would  drop  off,  if  he  did  not 
quit.  Yet  old  Antanas  would  not  quit;  he  saw  the  suf¬ 
fering  of  his  family,  and  he  remembered  what  it  had  cost 
him  to  get  a  job.  So  he  tied  up  his  feet,  and  went  on 
limping  about  and  coughing,  until  at  last  he  fell  to  pieces, 
all  at  once  and  in  a  heap,  like  the  One-Horse  Shay. 
They  carried  him  to  a  dry  place  and  laid  him  on  the  floor, 
and  that  night  two  of  the  men  helped  him  home.  The 
poor  old  man  was  put  to  bed,  and  though  he  tried  it  every 
morning  until  the  end,  he  never  could  get  up  again.  He 
would  lie  there  and  cough  and  cough,  day  and  night, 
wasting  away  to  a  mere  skeleton.  There  came  a  time 
when  there  was  so  little  flesh  on  him  that  the  bones  began 
to  poke  through  —  which  was  a  horrible  thing  to  see  or 
even  to  think  of.  And  one  night  he  had  a  choking  fit, 
and  a  little  river  of  blood  came  out  of  his  mouth.  The 
family,  wild  with  terror,  sent  for  a  doctor,  and  paid  half 
a  dollar  to  be  told  that  there  was  nothing  to  be  done. 
Mercifully  the  doctor  did  not  say  this  so  that  the  old  man 
could  hear,  for  he  was  still  clinging  to  the  faith  that 
to-morrow  or  next  day  he  would  be  better,  and  could  go 
back  to  his  job.  The  company  had  sent  word  to  him  that 
they  would  keep  it  for  him  —  or  rather  Jurgis  had  bribed 
one  of  the  men  to  come  one  Sunday  afternoon  and  say 
they  had.  Dede  Antanas  continued  to  believe  it,  v/hile 
three  more  hemorrhages  came;  and  then  at  last  one  morn¬ 
ing  they  found  him  stiff  and  cold.  Things  were  not 
going  well  with  them  then,  and  though  it  nearly  broke 
Teta  Elzbieta’s  heart,  they  were  forced  to  dispense  with 


92 


THE  JUNGLE 


nearly  all  the  decencies  of  a  funeral ;  they  had  only  a 
hearse,  and  one  hack  for  the  women  and  children;  and 
Jurgis,  who  was  learning  things  fast,  spent  all  Sunday 
making  a  bargain  for  these,  and  he  made  it  in  the  pres¬ 
ence  of  witnesses,  so  that  when  the  man  tried  to  charge 
him  for  all  sorts  of  incidentals,  he  did  not  have  to  pay. 
For  twenty-five  years  old  An  tanas  Rudkus  and  his  son 
had  dwelt  in  the  forest  together,  and  it  was  hard  to  part 
in  this  way;  perhaps  it  was  just  as  well  that  Jurgis  had 
to  give  all  his  attention  to  the  task  of  having  a  funeral 
without  being  bankrupted,  and  so  had  no  time  to  indulge 
in  memories  and  grief. 

Now  the  dreadful  winter  was  come  upon  them.  In  the 
forests,  all  summer  long,  the  branches  of  the  trees  do 
battle  for  light,  and  some  of  them  lose  and  die ;  and  . 
then  come  the  raging  blasts,  and  the  storms  of  snow  and 
hail,  and  strew  the  ground  with  these  weaker  branches. 
Just  so  it  was  in  Packingtown  ;  the  whole  district  braced 
itself  for  the  struggle  that  was  an  agony,  and  those  whose 
time  was  come  died  off  in  hordes.  All  the  year  round 
they  had  been  serving  as  cogs  in  the  great  packing- 
machine  ;  and  now  was  the  time  for  the  renovating  of 
it,  and  the  replacing  of  damaged  parts.  There  came 
pneumonia  and  grippe,  stalking  among  them,  seeking 
for  weakened  constitutions;  there  was  the  annual  har¬ 
vest  of  those  whom  tuberculosis  had  been  dragging  down. 
There  came  cruel,  cold,  and  biting  winds,  and  blizzards  of 
snow,  all  testing  relentlessly  for  failing  muscles  and  im¬ 
poverished  blood.  Sooner  or  later  came  the  day  when 
the  unfit  one  did  not  report  for  work  ;  and  then,  with  no 
time  lost  in  waiting,  and  no  inquiries  or  regrets,  there 
was  a  chance  for  a  new  hand. 

The  new  hands  were  here  by  the  thousands.  All  day 
long  the  gates  of  the  packing-houses  were  besieged  by 
starving  and  penniless  men  ;  they  came,  literally,  by  the 
thousands  every  single  morning,  fighting  with  each  other 
for  a  chance  for  life.  Blizzards  and  cold  made  no  differ¬ 
ence  to  them,  they  were  always  on  hand ;  they  were  on 


THE  JUNGLE 


.  93 


hand  two  hours  before  the  sun  rose,  an  hour  before  the 
work  began.  Sometimes  their  faces  froze,  sometimes  their 
feet  and  their  hands;  sometimes  they  froze  all  together  — 
but  still  they  came,  for  they  had  no  other  place  to  go. 
One  day  Durham  advertised  in  the  paper  for  two  hundred 
men  to  cut  ice  ;  and  all  that  day  the  homeless  and  starv¬ 
ing  of  the  city  came  trudging  through  the  snow  from  all 
over  its  two  hundred  square  miles.  That  night  forty 
score  of  them  crowded  into  the  station-house  of  the  stock- 
yards  district  —  they  filled  the  rooms,  sleeping  in  each 
other’s  laps,  toboggan-fashion,  and  they  piled  on  top  of 
each  other  in  the  corridors,  till  the  police  shut  the  doors 
and  left  some  to  freeze  outside.  On  the  morrow,  before 
daybreak,  there  were  three  thousand  at  Durham’s,  and 
the  police-reserves  had  to  be  sent  for  to  quell  the  riot. 
Then  Durham’s  bosses  picked  out  twenty  of  the  biggest; 
the  “  two  hundred  ”  proved  to  have  been  a  printer’s 
error. 

Four  or  five  miles  to  the  eastward  lay  the  lake,  and 
over  this  the  bitter  winds  came  raging.  Sometimes  the 
thermometer  would  fall  to  ten  or  twenty  degrees  below 
zero  at  night,  and  in  the  morning  the  streets  would  be 
piled  with  snowdrifts  up  to  the  first-floor  windows.  The 
streets  through  which  our  friends  had  to  go  to  their  work 
were  all  unpaved  and  full  of  deep  holes  and  gullies ;  in 
summer,  when  it  rained  hard,  a  man  might  have  to  wade 
to  his  waist  to  get  to  his  house ;  and  now  in  winter  it 
was  no  joke  getting  through  these  places,  before  light 
in  the  morning  and  after  dark  at  night.  They  would 
wrap  up  in  all  they  owned,  but  they  could  not  wrap  up 
against  exhaustion  ;  and  many  a  man  gave  out  in  these 
battles  with  the  snowdrifts,  and  lay  down  and  fell 
asleep. 

And  if  it  was  bad  for  the  men,  one  ma}’'  imagine  how 
the  women  and  children  fared.  Some  would  ride  in  the 
cars,  if  the  cars  were  running  ;  but  when  you  are  making 
only  five  cents  an  hour,  as  was  little  Stanislovas,  you  do 
not  like  to  spend  that  much  to  ride  two  miles.  The  chil¬ 
dren  would  come  to  the  yards  with  great  shawls  about 


94 


THE  JUNGLE 


their  ears,  and  so  tied  up  that  you  could  hardly  find  them 
—  and  still  there  would  be  accidents.  One  bitter  morn¬ 
ing  in  February  the  little  boy  who  worked  at  the  lard- 
machine  with  Stanislovas  came  about  an  liour  late,  and 
screaming  with  pain.  They  unwrapped  him,  and  a  man 
began  vigorously  rubbing  his  ears  ;  and  as  they  were 
frozen  stiff,  it  took  only  two  or  three  rubs  to  break  them 
short  off.  As  a  result  of  this,  little  Stanislovas  conceived 
a  terror  of  the  cold  that  was  almost  a  mania.  Every 
morning,  when  it  came  time  to  start  for  the  yards,  he 
would  begin  to  cry  and  protest.  Nobody  knew  quite 
how  to  manage  him,  for  threats  did  no  good  —  it  seemed 
to  be  something  that  he  could  not  control,  and  they  feared 
sometimes  that  he  would  go  into  convulsions.  In  the  end 
it  had  to  be  arranged  that  he  always  went  with  Jurgis, 
and  came  home  with  him  again ;  and  often,  when  the 
snow  was  deep,  the  man  would  carry  him  the  whole  way 
on  his  shoulders.  Sometimes  Jurgis  would  be  working 
until  late  at  night,  and  then  it  was  pitiful,  for  there  was 
no  place  for  the  little  fellow  to  wait,  save  in  the  doorways 
or  in  a  corner  of  the  killing-beds,  and  he  would  all  but 
fail  asleep  there,  and  freeze  to  death. 

There  was  no  heat  upon  the  killing-beds ;  the  men 
might  exactly  as  well  have  worked  out  of  doors  all 
winter.  For  that  matter,  there  was  very  little  heat 
anywhere  in  the  building,  except  in  the  cooking-rooms 
and  such  places  —  and  it  was  the  men  who  worked  in 
these  who  ran  the  most  risk  of  all,  because  whenever 
they  had  to  pass  to  another  room  they  had  to  go  through 
ice-cold  corridors,  and  sometimes  with  nothing  on  above 
the  waist  except  a  sleeveless  undershirt.  On  the  killing- 
beds  you  were  apt  to  be  covered  with  blood,  and  it  would 
freeze  solid ;  if  you  leaned  against  a  pillar,  you  would 
freeze  to  that,  and  if  you  put  your  hand  upon  the  blade 
of  your  knife,  you  would  run  a  chance  of  leaving  your 
skin  on  it.  The  men.  would  tie  up  their  feet  in  news¬ 
papers  and  old  sacks,  and  these  would  be  soaked  in  blood 
and  frozen,  and  then  soaked  again,  and  so  on,  until  by 
night-time  a  man  would  be  walking  on  great  lumps  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


95 


size  of  the  feet  of  an  elephant.  Now  and  then,  when  the 
bosses  were  not  looking,  you  would  see  them  plunging 
their  feet  and  ankles  into  the  steaming  hot  carcass  of  the 
steer,  or  darting  across  the  room  to  the  hot- water  jets. 
The  crudest  thing  of  all  was  that  nearly  all  of  them  —  all 
of  those  who  used  knives  —  were  unable  to  wear  gloves, 
and  their  arms  would  be  white  with  frost  and  their  hands 
would  grow  numb,  and  then  of  course  there  would  be 
accidents.  Also  the  air  would  be  full  of  steam,  from  the 
hot  water  and  the  hot  blood,  so  that  you  could  not  see 
five  feet  before  you  ;  and  then,  with  men  rushing  about 
at  the  speed  they  kept  up  on  the  killing-beds,  and  all  with 
butcher-knives,  like  razors,  in  their  hands  —  well,  it  was 
to  be  counted  as  a  wonder  that  there  were  not  more  men 
slaughtered  than  cattle. 

And  yet  all  this  inconvenience  they  might  have  put  up 
with,  if  only  it  had  not  been  for  one  thing  —  if  only  there 
had  been  some  place  where  they  might  eat.  Jurgis  had 
either  to  eat  his  dinner  amid  the  stench  in  which  he  had 
worked,  or  else  to  rush,  as  did  all  his  companions,  to 
any  one  of  the  hundreds  of  liquor  stores  which  stretched 
out  their  arms  to  him.  To  the  west  of  the  yards  ran  Ash¬ 
land  Avenue,  and  here  was  an  unbroken  line  of  saloons  — 
“  Whiskey  Row,”  they  called  it ;  to  the  north  was  Forty- 
seventh  Street,  where  there  were  half  a  dozen  to  the  block, 
and  at  the  angle  of  the  two  was  “  Whiskey  Point,”  a  space 
of  fifteen  or  twenty  acres,  and  containing  one  glue-factory 
and  about  two  hundred  saloons. 

One  might  walk  among  these  and  take  his  choice  ; 
“  Hot  pea-soup  and  boiled  cabbage  to-day.”  Sauer¬ 
kraut  and  hot  frankfurters.  Walk  in.”  “  Bean-soup  and 
stewed  lamb.  Welcome.”  All  of  these  things  were 
printed  in  many  languages,  as  were  also  the  names  of  the 
resorts,  which  were  infinite  in  their  variety  and  appeal, 
There  was  the  “  Home  Circle  ”  and  the  “  Cosey  Corner  ”  j 
there  were  “  Firesides  ”  and  Hearthstones”  and  “  Pleas¬ 
ure  Palaces”  and  “  Wonderlands”  and  “  Dream  Castles  ” 
and  “  Love’s  Delights.”  Whatever  else  they  were  called, 
they  were  sure  to  be  called  “  Union  Headquarters,”  and  to 


96 


THE  JUNGLE 


hold  out  a  welcome  to  workingmen  ;  and  there  was  always 
a  warm  stove,  and  a  chair  near  it,  and  some  friends  to  laugh 
and  talk  with.  There  was  only  one  condition  attached, — 
you  must  drink.  If  you  went  in  not  intending  to  drink, 
you  would  be  put  out  in  no  time,  and  if  you  were  slow 
about  going,  like  as  not  you  would  get  your  head  split 
open  with  a  beer-bottle  in  the  bargain.  But  all  of  the 
men  understood  the  convention  and  drank  ;  they  believed 
that  by  it  they  were  getting  something  for  nothing  —  for 
they  did  not  need  to  take  more  than  one  drink,  and  upon  the 
strength  of  it  they  might  fill  themselves  up  with  a  good  hot 
dinner.  This  did  not  always  work  out  in  practice,  how¬ 
ever,  for  there  was  pretty  sure  to  be  a  friend  who  would 
treat  you,  and  then  you  would  have  to  treat  him.  Then 
some  one  else  would  come  in  —  and,  anyhow,  a  few  drinks 
were  good  for  a  man  who  worked  hard.  As  he  went  back 
he  did  not  shiver  so,  he  had  more  courage  for  his  task; 
the  deadly  brutalizing  monotony  of  it  did  not  afflict  him 
so,  —  he  had  ideas  while  he  worked,  and  took  a  more  cheer¬ 
ful  view  of  his  circumstances.  On  the  way  home,  however, 
the  shivering  was  apt  to  come  on  him  again  ;  and  so  he 
would  have  to  stop  once  or  twice  to  warm  up  against  the 
cruel  cold.  As  there  were  hot  things  to  eat  in  this  saloon 
too,  he  might  get  home  late  to  his  supper,  or  he  might  not 
get  home  at  all.  And  then  his  wife  might  set  out  to  look 
for  him,  and  she  too  Avould  feel  the  cold ;  and  perhaps  she 
would  have  some  of  the  children  with  her — and  so  a 
whole  family  would  drift  into  drinking,  as  the  current  of 
a  river  drifts  down-stream.  As  if  to  complete  the  chain, 
the  packers  all  paid  their  men  in  checks,  refusing  all  re¬ 
quests  to  pay  in  coin  ;  and  where  in  Packingtown  could  a 
man  go  to  have  his  check  cashed  but  to  a  saloon,  where 
he  could  pay  for  the  favor  by  spending  a  part  of  the 
money  ? 

From  all  of  these  things  Jurgis  was  saved  because  of 
Ona.  He  never  would  take  but  the  one  drink  at  noon¬ 
time  ;  and  so  he  got  the  reputation  of  being  a  surly 
fellow,  and  was  not  quite  welcome  at  the  saloons,  and  had 
to  drift  about  from  one  to  another.  Then  at  night  he 


THE  JUNGLE 


97 


would  go  straight  home,  helping  Ona  and  Stanislovas,  or 
often  putting  the  former  on  a  car.  And  when  he  got 
home  perhaps  he  would  have  to  trudge  several  blocks,  and 
come  staggering  back  through  the  snowdrifts  with  a  bag 
of  coal  upon  his  shoulder.  Home  was  not  a  very  attrac¬ 
tive  place  —  at  least  not  this  winter.  They  had  only  been 
able  to  buy  one  stove,  and  this  wr.s  a  small  one,  and 
proved  not  big  enough  to  warm  even  the  kitchen  in  the 
bitterest  weather.  This  made  it  hard  for  Teta  Elzbieta  all 
day,  and  for  the  children  when  they  could  not  get  to 
school.  At  night  they  would  sit  huddled  round  this 
stove,  while  they  ate  their  supper  off  their  laps  ;  and  then 
Jurgis  and  Jonas  would  smoke  a  pipe,  after  which  they 
would  all  crawl  into  their  beds  to  get  warm,  after  putting 
out  the  fire  to  save  the  eoal.  Then  they  would  have  some 
frightful  experiences  with  the  cold.  They  would  sleep 
with  ail  their  clothes  on,  including  their  overcoats,  and 
put  over  them  all  the  bedding  and  spare  clotliing  they 
owned  ;  the  children  would  sleep  all  crowded  into  one 
bed,  and  yet  even  so  they  could  not  keep  warm.  The 
outside  ones  would  be  shivering  and  sobbing,  crawling 
over  the  others  and  trying  to  get  down  into  the  centre, 
and  causing  a  fight.  This  old  house  Vfith  the  leaky 
weather-boards  was  a  very  different  thing  from  their 
cabins  at  home,  with  great  thiek  walls  plastered  inside 
and  outside  with  mud  ;  and  the  cold  which  came  upon 
them  was  a  living  thing,  a  demon-presence  in  the  room. 
They  would  waken  in  the  midnight  hours,  when  every¬ 
thing  was  black  ;  perhaps  they  would  hear  it  yelling  out¬ 
side,  or  perhaps  there  would  be  deathlike  stillness  —  and 
that  would  be  worse  yet.  They  could  feel  the  cold  as  it 
crept  in  through  the  cracks,  reaching  out  for  them  with  its 
icy,  death-dealing  fingers;  and  they  would  crouch  and 
cower,  and  try  to  hide  from  it,  all  in  vain.  It  would  come, 
and  it  would  come  ;  a  grisly  thing,  a  spectre  born  in  the 
black  caverns  of  terror  ;  a  power  primeval,  cosmic,  shadow¬ 
ing  the  tortures  of  the  lost  souls  flung  out  to  chaos 
and  destruction.  It  was  cruel,  iron-hard  ;  and  hour  after 
hour  they  would  cringe  in  its  grasp,  alone,  alone.  There 


9S 


THE  JUXGLE 


wotild  be  no  one  to  hear  them  if  they  cried  out ;  there 
would  be  no  help,  no  mercy.  And  so  on  until  morning  — 
when  they  would  go  out  to  another  day  of  toil,  a  little 
weaker,  a  little  nearer  to  the  time  when  it  would  be  their 
turn  to  be  shaken  from  the  tree. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


Yet  even  bj’’  this  deadly  winter  tbe  germ  of  hope  was 
not  to  be  kept  from  sproiiting  in  their  hearts.  It  was  just 
at  this  time  that  the  great  adventure  befell  Mari j a. 

The  \’ictim  was  Tamoszius  Kuszleika,  who  played  the 
violin.  Everybody  laughed  at  them,  for  Tamoszius  was 
petite  and  frail,  and  Marija  could  have  picked  him  up  and 
carried  liim  off  under  one  arm.  But  perhaps  that  was 
why  she  fascinated  him;  the  sheer  volume  of  Marija’s 
energy  was  overwhelming.  That  first  night  at  the  wed¬ 
ding  Tomoszius  had  hardly  taken  his  eyes  off  her;  and 
later  on,  when  he  came  to  find  that  she  had  reaUy  the 
heart  of  a  baby,  her  voice  and  her  \’iolence  ceased  to  ter¬ 
rify  him,  and  he  got  the  habit  of  coming  to  pay  her  visits 
on  Sunday  afternoons.  There  was  no  place  to  entertain 
company  creep  t  in  the  kitchen,  in  the  midst  of  the  family, 
and  Tamoszius  woidd  sit  there  with  his  hat  between  his 
knees,  never  sajdng  more  than  half  a  dozen  words  at  a 
time,  and  turning  red  in  the  face  before  he  managed  to 
say  those;  until  finally  Jurgis  would  clap  him  upon  the 
back,  in  his  hearty  way,  erj-iug,  “Come  now,  brother,  give 
us  a  tune.”  And  then  Tamoszius’s  face  woxdd  fight  up 
and  he  woidd  get  out  his  fiddle,  tuck  it  under  his  dun,  and 
play.  And  forthwith  the  soul  of  him  would  flame  up  and 
become  eloquent — it  was  almost  an  impropriety,  for  all  the 
while  his  gaze  woidd  be  fixed  upon  Marija’s  face  until  she 
would  begin  to  turn  red  and  lower  her  eyes.  There  was  no 
resisting  the  music  of  Tamoszius,  however;  even  the  chil¬ 
dren  woidd  sit  awed  and  wondering,  and  the  tears  would 
run  down  Teta  Elzbieta’s  cheeks.  A  wonderfid  privilege 
it  was  to  be  thus  admitted  into  the  soul  of  a  man  of  genius, 

99 


100 


THE  JUNGLE 


to  be  allowed  to  share  the  ecstasies  and  the  agonies  of  his 
inmost  life. 

Then  there  were  other  benefits  accruing  to  Marija  from 
this  friendship  —  benefits  of  a  more  substantial  nature. 
People  paid  Tamoszius  big  money  to  come  and  make 
music  on  state  occasions  ;  and  also  they  would  invite  him 
to  parties  and  festivals,  knowing  well  that  he  was  too 
good-natured  to  come  without  his  fiddle,  and  that  having 
brought  it,  he  could  be  made  to  play  while  others  danced. 
Once  he  made  bold  to  ask  Marija  to  accompany  him  to 
such  a  party,  and  Marija  accepted,  to  his  great  delight  — - 
after  which  he  never  went  anywhere  without  her,  while  if 
the  celebration  were  given  by  friends  of  bis,  he  would 
invite  the  rest  of  the  family  also.  In  any  case  Marija 
would  bring  back  a  huge  pocketful  of  cakes  and  sandwiches 
for  the  children,  and  stories  of  all  the  good  things  she 
herself  had  managed  to  consume.  She  was  compelled,  at 
these  parties,  to  spend  most  of  her  time  at  the  refreshment 
table,  for  she  could  not  dance  with  anybody  except  other 
women  and  very  old  men  ;  Tamoszius  was  of  an  excitable 
temperament,  and  afflicted  with  a  frantic  jealousy,  and  any 
unmarried  man  who  ventured  to  put  his  arm  about  the 
ample  waist  of  Marija  would  be  certain  to  throw  the 
orchestra  out  of  tune. 

It  was  a  great  help  to  a  person  who  had  to  toil  all  the 
week  to  be  able  to  look  forward  to  some  such  relaxation  as 
this  on  Saturday  nights.  The  family  were  too  poor  and  too 
hard  worked  to  make  many  acquaintances;  in  Packing- 
town,  as  a  rule,  people  know  only  their  near  neighbors  and 
shopmates,  and  so  the  place  is  like  a  myriad  of  little  country 
villages.  But  now  there  was  a  member  of  the  family  who 
was  permitted  to  travel  and  widen  her  horizon  ;  and  so 
each  week  there  would  be  new  personalities  to  talk  about, 
-—how  so-and-so  was  dressed,  and  where  she  worked,  and 
what  she  got,  and  whom  she  was  in  love  with  ;  and  how 
this  man  had  jilted  his  girl,  and  how  she  had  quarrelled 
with  the  other  girl,  and  what  had  passed  between  them; 
and  how  another  man  beat  his  wife,  and  spent  all  her 
earnings  upon  drink,  and  pawned  her  very  clothes-  Some 


THE  JUNGLE 


101 


people  would  have  scorned  this  talk  as  gossip  ;  but  then 
one  has  to  talk  about  what  one  knows. 

It  was  one  Saturday  night,  as  they  were  coming  home 
from  a  wedding,  that  Tamoszius  found  courage,  and  set 
down  his  violin-case  in  the  street  and  spoke  his  heart ;  and 
then  Marija  clasped  him  in  her  arms.  She  told  them  all 
about  it  the  next  day,  and  fairly  cried  with  happiness, 
for  she  said  that  Tamoszius  was  a  lovely  man.  After 
that  he  no  longer  made  love  to  her  with  his  fiddle,  but 
they  would  sit  for  hours  in  the  kitchen,  blissfully  happy 
in'  each  other’s  arms  ;  it  was  the  tacit  convention  of  the 
family  to  know  nothing  of  what  was  going  on  in  that 
corner. 

They  were  planning  to  be  married  in  the  spring,  and 
have  the  garret  of  the  house  fixed  up,  and  live  there. 
Tamoszius  made  good  wages;  and  little  by  little  the 
family  were  paying  back  their  debt  to  Marija,  so  she 
ought  soon  to  have  enough  to  start  life  upon  —  only,  with 
her  preposterous  soft-hearted  ness,  she  would  insist  upon 
spending  a  good  part  of  her  money  every  week  for  things 
which  she  saw  they  needed.  Marija  was  really  the  capi¬ 
talist  of  the  party,  for  she  had  become  an  expert  can- 
painter  by  this  time  —  she  was  getting  fourteen  cents  for 
every  hundred  and  ten  cans,  and  she  could  paint  more 
than  two  cans  every  minute.  Marija  felt,  so  to  speak,  that 
she  had  her  hand  on  the  throttle,  and  the  neighborhood 
was  vocal  with  her  rejoicings. 

Yet  her  friends  would  shake  their  heads  and  tell  her  to 
go  slow  ;  one  could  not  count  upon  such  good  fortune  for¬ 
ever —  there  were  accidents  that  always  happened.  But 
Marija  was  not  to  be  prevailed  upon,  and  went  on  planning 
and  dreaming  of  all  the  treasures  she  was  going  to  have 
for  her  home;  and  so,  when  the  crash  did  come,  her  grief 
was  painful  to  see. 

For  her  canning-factory  shut  down  I  Marija  would 
about  as  soon  have  expected  to  see  the  sun  shut  down  — ■ 
the  huge  establishment  had  been  to  her  a  thing  akin  to 
*he  planets  and  the  seasons.  But  now  it  was  shut  I  And 
-^bey  had  not  given  her  any  explanation,  they  had  not  even 


102 


THE  JUNGLE 


given  her  a  da3^’s  warning ;  they  had  simpty  posted  a 
notice  one  Saturday  tha.t  all  hands  would  be  paid  off  that 
afternoon,  and  would  not  resume  v/ork  for  at  least  a 
month  1  And  that  was  all  that  there  was  to  it  —  her  job 
was  gone  ! 

It  was  the  holiday  rush  that  was  over,  the  girls  said  in 
answer  to  Marija’s  inquiries  ;  after  that  there  was  always 
a  slack.  Sometimes  the  factory  would  start  up  on  half¬ 
time  after  a  while,  but  there  was  no  telling  — it  had  been 
known  to  stay  closed  until  way  into  the  summer.  The 
prospects  were  bad  at  present,  for  truckmen  who  worked 
in  the  store-rooms  said  that  these  were  piled  up  to  the  ceil¬ 
ings,  so  that  the  firm  could  not  have  found  room  for  an¬ 
other  week’s  output  of  cans.  And  they  had  turned  off 
three-quarters  of  these  men,  which  was  a  still  worse  sign, 
since  it  meant  that  there  were  no  orders  to  be  filled.  It 
was  all  a  swindle,  can-painting,  said  the  girls  —  you  were 
crazy  with  delight  because  you  were  making  twelve  or 
fourteen  dollars  a  week,  and  saving  half  of  it ;  but  you 
had  to  spend  it  all  keeping  alive  while  you  were  out,  and 
so  your  pay  was  really  only  half  what  you  thought. 

Marija  came  home,  and  because  she  was  a  person  who 
could  not  rest  without  danger  of  explosion,  they  first  had 
a  great  house-cleaning,  and  then  she  set  out  to  search 
Packingtown  for  a  job  to  fill  up  the  gap.  As  nearly  all 
the  canning-establishments  were  shut  down,  and  all  the 
girls  hunting  work,  it  will  be  readily  understood  that 
Marija  did  not  find  any.  Then  she  took  to  trying  the« 
stores  and  saloons,  and  when  this  failed  she  even  travelled 
over  into  the  far-distant  regions  near  the  lake  front,  where 
lived  the  riclv  people  in  great  palaces,  and  begged  there 
for  some  sort  of  work  that  could  be  done  by  a  person  who 
did  not  know  English. 

The  men  upon  the  killing-beds  felt  also  the  effects  of 
the  slump  which  had  turned  Marija  out ;  but  they  felt  it  in 
a  different  way,  and  a  way  which  made  Jurgis  understand 
at  last  all  their  bitterness.  The  big  packers  did  not  turn 
their  hands  off  and  close  down,  like  the  canning-factories,- 


THE  JUNGLE 


103 


but  they  began  to  run  for  shorter  and  shorter  hours. 
They  had  always  required  the  men  to  be  on  the  killing- 
beds  and  ready  for  work  at  seven  o’clock,  although  there 
was  almost  never  any  work  to  be  done  till  the  buyers 
out  in  the  yards  had  gotten  to  work,  and  some  cattle  had 
come  over  the  chutes.  That  would  often  be  ten  or  eleven 
o’clock,  which  was  bad  enough,  in  all  conscience  ;  but  now, 
in  the  slack  season,  they  would  perhaps  not  have  a  thing 
for  their  men  to  do  till  late  in  the  afternoon.  And  so 
they  would  have  to  loaf  around,  in  a  place  where  the 
thermometer  might  be  twenty  degrees  below  zero !  At 
first  one  would  see  them  running  about,  or  skylarking 
with  each  other,  trying  to  keep  warm  ;  but  before  the  day 
was  over  they  would  become  quite  chilled  through  and 
exhausted,  and,  when  the  cattle  finally  came,  so  near  frozen 
that  to  move  was  an  agony.  And  then  suddenly  the  place 
would  spring  into  activity,  and  the  merciless  “speeding- 
up  ”  would  begin  I 

There  were  weeks  at  a  time  when  Jurgis  went  home 
after  such  a  day  as  this  with  not  more  than  two  hours’ 
work  to  his  credit  —  which  meant  about  thirty-five  cents. 
There  were  many  days  when  the  total  was  less  than  half 
an  hour,  and  others  when  there  was  none  at  all.  The 
general  average  was  six  hours  a  day,  which  meant  for 
Jurgis  about  six  dollars  a  week  ;  and  this  six  hours  of 
work  would  be  done  after  standing  on  the  killing-bed  till 
one  o’clock,  or  perhaps  even  three  or  four  o’clock,  in  the 
afternoon.  Like  as  not  there  would  come  a  rush  of  cattle 
at  the  very  end  of  the  day,  which  the  men  would  have  to 
dispose  of  before  they  went  home,  often  working  by 
electric  light  till  nine  or  ten,  or  even  twelve  or  one  o’clock, 
and  without  a  single  instant  for  a  bite  of  supper.  The 
men  were  at  the  mercy  of  the  cattle.  Perhaps  the  buyers 
would  be  holding  off  for  better  prices  —  if  they  could  scare 
the  shippers  into  thinking  that  they  meant  to  buy  nothing 
chat  day,  they  could  get  their  own  terms.  For  some 
reason  the  cost  of  fodder  for  cattle  in  the  yards  was  much 
above  the  market  price  —  and  you  were  not  allowed  to 
bring  your  own  fodder  I  Then,  too,  a  number  of  cars  were 


104 


XHB  JUNGUa 


apt  to  arrive  late  in  the  day,  now  that  the  roads  were 
blocked  with  snow,  and  the  packers  would  buy  their 
cattle  that  night,  to  get  them  cheaper,  and  then  would 
come  into  play  their  iron-clad  rule,  that  all  cattle  must  be 
killed  the  same  day  they  were  bought.  There  was  no  use 
kicking  about  this  —  there  had  been  one  delegation  after 
another  to  see  the  packers  about  it,  only  to  be  told  that  it  was 
the  rule,  and  that  there  was  not  the  slightest  chance  of 
its  e^-^er  being  altered.  And  so  on  Christmas  Eve  J  urgis 
worked  till  nearly  one  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and  on 
Christmas  Day  he  was  on  the  killing-bed  at  seven  o’clock. 

Ail  this  was  bad ;  and  yet  it  was  not  the  worst.  For 
after  all  the  hard  work  a  man  did,  he  was  paid  for  only 
part  of  it.  Jurgis  had  once  been  among  those  who  scolfed 
at  the  idea  of  these  huge  concerns  cheating ;  and  so  now  he 
could  appreciate  the  bitter  irony  of  the  fact  that  it  was 
precisely  their  size  which  enabled  them  to  do  it  with 
impunity.  One  of  the  rules  on  the  killing-beds  was  that  a 
man  who  was  one  minute  late  '  is  docked  an  hour;  and 
this  was  economical,  for  he  w"  aade  to  work  the  balance 
of  the  hour— he  was  not  a^-ywed  to  stand  round  and 
wait.  And  on  the  other  hand  if  he  came  ahead  of  time  he 
got  no  pay  for  that  —  though  often  the  bosses  would  start 
up  the  gang  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  before  the  whistle. 
And  this  same  custom  they  carried  over  to  the  end  of  the 
day ;  they  did  not  pay  for  any  fraction  of  an  hour  —  for 
“broken  time.”  A  man  might  work  full  fifty  minutes, 
but  if  there  was  no  work  to  fill  out  the  hour,  there  was  no 
pay  for  him.  Thus  the  end  of  every  day  was  a  sort  ol 
lottery  —  a  struggle,  all  but  breaking  into  open  war 
between  the  bosses  and  the  men,  the  former  trying  to 
rush  a  job  through  and  the  latter  trying  to  stretch  it  out. 
Jurgis  blamed  the  bosses  for  this,  though  the  truth  to  be 
told  it  was  not  always  their  fault;  for  the  packers  kept 
them  frightened  for  their  lives  —  and  when  one  was  in 
danger  of  falling  behind  the  standard,  what  was  easier 
than  to  catch  up  by  making  the  gang  work  awhile  “for 
the  church  ”  ?  This  was  a  savage  witticism  the  men 
had,  which  Jurgis  had  to  have  explained  to  him.  Old 


THE 


105 


<nan  Jones  was  great  on  missions  and  such  things,  and  so 
whenever  they  were  doing  some  particularly  disreputable 
job,  the  men  would  wink  at  each  other  and  say,  “  Now 
we’re  working  for  the  church  !  ” 

One  of  the  consequences  of  all  these  things  was  that 
Jurgis  was  no  longer  pernlexed  when  he  heard  men  talk 
of  fighting  for  their  rights.  He  felt  like  fighting  now 
himself;  and  when  the  Irish  delegate  of  the  butcher- 
helpers’  union  came  to  him  a  second  time,  he  received  him 
in  a  far  different  spirit.  A  wonderful  idea  it  now  seemed 
to*  Jurgis,  this  of  the  men  —  that  by  combining  they 
might  be  able  to  make  a  stand  and  conquer  the  packers  I 
Jurgis  wondered  who  had  first  thought  of  it;  and  Avhen 
he  was  told  that  it  was  a  common  thing  for  men  to  do  in 
America,  he  got  the  first  inkling  of  a  meaning  in  the 
phrase  “a  free  country.”  The  delegate  explained  to  him 
how  it  depended  upon  their  being  able  to  get  every  man 
to  join  and  stand  by  the  organization,  and  so  Jurgis  sig¬ 
nified  that  he  was  willing  0  do  his  share.  Before  another 
month  was  by,  all  the  wo,,  ,r'iig  members  of  his  family  had 
union  cards,  and  wore  the,  j,’ anion  buttons  conspicuously 
and  with  pride.  For  fully  a  week  they  were  quite  bliss¬ 
fully  happy,  thinking  that  belonging  to  a  union  meant  an 
end  of  all  their  troubles. 

But  only  ten  days  after  she  had  joined,  Marija’s  canning- 
factory  closed  down,  and  that  blow  quite  staggered  them. 
They  could  not  understand  why  the  union  had  not  pre¬ 
vented  it,  and  tlie  very  first  time  she  attended  a  meeting 
Marija  got  up  and  made  a  speech  about  it.  It  was  a 
business  meeting,  and  was  transacted  in  English,  but 
that  made  no  difference  to  Marija ;  she  said  what  was  in 
her,  and  all  the  pounding  of  the  cliairman’s  gavel  and  all 
the  uproar  and  confusion  in  the  room  could  not  prevail. 
Quite  apart  from  her  own  troubles  she  was  boiling  over 
with  a  general  sense  of  the  injustice  of  it,  and  she  told 
what  she  tiionght  of  the  packers,  and  what  she  thought 
of  a  world  where  such  things  were  allowed  to  happen  ; 
and  then,  while  the  echoes  of  the  hall  rang  with  the  shock 
of  her  terrible  voice,  she  sat  down  again  and  fanned  her- 


106 


THE  jmfGliEi 


self,  and  the  meeting  gathered  itself  together  and  pro 
ceeded  to  discuss  the  election  of  a  recording  secretary. 

Jurgis  too  had  an  adventure  the  first  time  he  attended 
a  union  meeting,  but  it  was  not  of  his  own  seeking. 
J  urgis  had  gone  with  the  desire  to  get  into  an  inconspic¬ 
uous  corner  and  see  what  was  done  ;  but  this  attitude  of 
silent  and  open-eyed  attention  hc.d  marked  him  out  for  a 
victim.  Tommy  Finnegan  was  a  little  Irishman,  with 
big  staring  eyes  and  a  wild  aspect,  a  “  bolster  ”  by  trade, 
and  badly  cracked.  Somewhere  back  in  the  far-distant 
past  Tommy  Finnegan  had  had  a  strange  experience,  and 
the  burden  of  it  rested  upon  him.  All  the  balance  of  his 
life  he  had  done  nothing  but  try  to  make  it  understood. 
When  he  talked  ho  caught  his  victim  by  the  buttonhole, 
and  his  face  kept  coming  closer  and  closer  —  which  was 
trying,  because  his  teeth  were  so  bad.  Jurgis  did  not 
mind  that,  only  he  was  frightened.  The  method  of  opera¬ 
tion  of  the  higher  intelligences  was  Toju  Finnegan’s  theme, 
and  he  desired  to  find  out  if  Jurgis  had  ever  considered 
that  the  representation  of  things  in  their  present  similar¬ 
ity  might  be  altogether  unintelligible  upon  a  more  elevated 
plane.  There  were  assuredly  wonderful  mysteries  about 
the  developing  of  these  things  ;  and  then,  becoming  con¬ 
fidential,  Mr.  Finnegan  proceeded  to  tell  of  some  discov¬ 
eries  of  his  own.  “■  If  ye  have  iver  had  onything  to  do 
wid  shperrits,”  said  he,  and  looked  inquiringly  at  Jurgis, 
who  kept  shaking  his  head.  “  Niver  mind,  niver  mind,” 
continued  the  other,  “but  their  influences  may  be  oper¬ 
atin’  upon  ye  ;  it’s  shure  as  I’m  tollin’  ye,  it’s  them  that 
has  the  reference  to  the  immejit  surroundin’s  that  has  the 
most  of  power.  It  was  vouchsafed  to  me  in  me  youthful 
days  to  be  acquainted  with  shperrits”  —  and  so  Tommy 
Finnegan  went  on,  expounding  a  system  of  p’ailosophy, 
while  the  perspiration  came  out  on  Jurgis’s  forehead,  so 
great  was  his  agitation  and  embarrassment.  In  the  end 
one  of  the  men,  seeing  his  plight,  came  over  and  rescued 
him;,  but  it  was  some  time  before  he  was  a’ole  to  find  any 
one  to  explain  things  to  him,  and  meanwhile  his  fear  lest 
the  strange  little  Irishman  should  get  him  cornered  again 


THE  JU^TGLE 


107 


v^as  enough  to  keep  Mm  dodging  about  the  room  the 
whole  evening. 

He  never  missed  a  meeting,  however.  He  had  picked 
up  a  few  words  of  English  by  this  time,  and  friends  would 
help  him  to  understand.  They  were  often  very  turbulent 
meetings,  with  half  a  dozen  men  declaiming  at  once,  in 
as  many  dialects  of  English  ;  but  the  speakers  were  al] 
desperately  in  earnest,  and  Jurgis  was  in  earnest  too,  for 
he  understood  that  a  fight  was  on,  and  that  it  was  his 
fight.  Since  the  time  of  his  disillusionment,  Jurgis  had 
sworn  to  trust  no  man,  except  in  his  own  family ;  but 
here  he  discovered  that  he  had  brothers  in  aflliction,  and 
allies.  Their  one  chance  for  life  was  in  union,  and  so 
the  struggle  became  a  kind  of  crusade.  Jurgis  had  al¬ 
ways  been  a  member  of  the  church,  because  it  was  the 
right  thing  to  be,  but  the  church  had  never  touched  him, 
he  left  all  that  for  the  women.  Here,  however,  was  a 
new  religion  —  one  that  did  touch  him,  that  took  hold  of 
every  fibre  of  him  ;  and  with  all  the  zeal  and  fury  of  a 
convert  he  went  out  as  a  missionary.  There  were  many 
non-union  men  among  the  Lithuanians,  and  with  these 
he  would  labor  and  wrestle  in  prayer,  trying  to  show 
them  the  right.  Sometimes  they  would  be  obstinate  and 
refuse  to  see  it,  and  J urgis,  alas,  was  not  always  patient  I 
He  forgot  how  he  himself  had  been  blind,  a  short  time 
ago  —  after  the  fashion  of  all  crusaders  since  the  original 
ones,  who  set  out  to  spread  the  gospel  of  Brotherhood  by 
force  of  arms. 


CHAPTER  IX 


One  of  the  first  consequences  of  the  discovery  of  the 
union  was  that  Jurgis  became  desirous  of  learning  English. 
He  wanted  to  know  what  was  going  on  at  the  meetings, 
and  to  be  able  to  take  part  in  them ;  and  so  he  began  to 
look  about  him,  and  to  try  to  pick  up  words.  The  chil¬ 
dren,  who  were  at  school,  and  learning  fast,  would  teach 
him  a  few;  and  a  friend  loaned  him  a  little  book  that  had 
some  in  it,  and  Ona  would  read  them  to  him.  Then  Jurgis 
became  sorry  that  he  could  not  read  himself ;  and  later  on 
in  the  winter,  when  some  one  told  him  that  there  was  a 
night-school  that  was  free,  he  went  and  enrolled.  After 
that,  every  evening  that  he  got  home  from  the  yards  in 
time,  he  would  go  to  the  school ;  he  would  go  even  if  he 
were  in  time  for  only  half  an  hour.  They  were  teaching 
him  both  to  read  and  to  speak  English  —  and  they  would 
have  taught  him  other  things,  if  only  he  had  had  a  little 
time. 

Also  the  union  made  another  great  difference  with  him 
—  it  made  him  begin  to  pay  attention  to  the  country.  It 
was  the  beginning  of  democracy  with  him.  It  was  a  Kttle 
state,  the  union,  a  miniature  republic ;  its  affairs  were  every 
man's  affairs,  and  every  man  had  a  real  say  about  them. 
In  other  words,  in  the  union  Jurgis  learned  to  talk  politics. 
In  the  place  where  he  had  come  from  there  had  not  been 
any  politics  in  Russia  one  thought  of  the  government 
as  an  affliction  like  the  lightning  and  the  hail-  “  Duck, 
little  brother,  duck,”  the  wise  old  peasants  would  whisper; 
“everything  passes  away.”  And  when  Jurgis  had  first 
come  to  America  he  had  supposed  that  it  was  the  same. 
He  had  heard  people  say  that  it  was  a  free  country  —  but 
what  did  that  meat*'*  He  found  that  here,  precisely  as  in 

108 


THE  JUNGLE 


109 


Russia,  there  were  rich  men  who  owned  everything ;  and 
if  one  could  not  find  any  work,  was  not  the  hunger  he 
began  to  feel  the  same  sort  of  hunger? 

When  Jurgis  had  been  working  about  three  weeks  at 
Brown’s,  there  had  come  to  him  one  noon-time  a  man  who 
was  employed  as  a  night-watchman,  and  who  asked  him  if 
he  would  not  like  to  take  out  naturalization  papers  and  be¬ 
come  a  citizen.  Jurgis  did  not  know  what  that  meant, 
but  the  man  explained  the  advantages.  In  the  first  place, 
it  would  not  cost  him  anything,  and  it  would  get  him  half 
a  day  off,  with  his  pay  just  the  same;  and  then  when  elec¬ 
tion  time  came  he  would  be  able  to  vote  —  and  there  was 
something  in  that.  Jurgis  was  naturally  glad  to  accept, 
and  so  the  night-watchman  said  a  few  words  to  the  boss, 
and  he  was  excused  for  the  rest  of  the  day.  When,  later 
on,  he  wanted  a  holiday  to  get  married  he  could  not  get 
it;  and  as  for  a  holiday  with  pay  just  the  same  —  what 
power  had  wrought  that  miracle  heaven  only  knew  I  How¬ 
ever,  he  went  with  the  man,  who  picked  up  several  other 
newly  landed  immigrants,  Poles,  Lithuanians,  and  Slovaks, 
and  took  them  all  outside,  where  stood  a  great  four-horsa 
tally-ho  coach,  with  fifteen  or  twenty  men  already  in  it. 
It  was  a  fine  chance  to  see  the  sights  of  the  city,  and  the 
party  had  a  merry  time,  with  plenty  of  beer  handed  up 
from  inside.  So  they  drove  down-town  and  stopped  before 
an  imposing  granite  building,  in  which  they  interviewed 
an  official,  who  had  the  papers  all  ready,  with  only  the 
names  to  be  filled  in.  So  each  man  in  turn  took  an  oath 
of  which  he  did  not  understand  a  woid,  and  then  was  pre¬ 
sented  with  a  handsome  ornamented  document  with  a  big 
red  seal  and  the  shield  of  the  United  States  upon  it,  and 
was  told  that  he  had  become  a  citizen  of  the  Republic  and 
the  equal  of  the  President  himself. 

A  month  or  two  later  Jurgis  had  another  interview  with 
this  same  man,  who  told  him  where  to  go  to  “  register.” 
And  then  finally,  when  election  day  came,  the  packing¬ 
houses  posted  a  notice  that  men  who  desired  to  vote  might 
remain  away  until  nine  that  morning,  and  the  same  night- 
watchman  took  Jurgis  and  the  rest  of  his  flock  into  the 


110 


THE  JUNGLE 


back  room  of  a  saloon,  and  showed  each  of  them  where 
and  how  to  mark  a  ballot,  and  then  gave  each  two  dollars, 
and  took  them  to  the  polling  place,  where  there  was  a 
policeman  on  duty  especially  to  see  that  they  got  through 
all  right.  Jurgis  felt  quite  proud  of  this  good  luck  till 
he  got  home  and  met  Jonas,  who  had  taken  the  leader 
aside  and  whispered  to  him,  offering  to  vote  three  times 
for  four  dollars,  which  offer  had  been  accepted. 

And  now  in  the  union  Jurgis  met  men  who  explained 
all  this  mystery  to  him ;  and  he  learned  that  America 
differed  from  Russia  in  that  its  government  existed  under 
the  form  of  a  democracy.  The  officials  who  ruled  it,  and 
got  all  the  graft,  had  to  be  elected  first ;  and  so  there  were 
two  rival  sets  of  grafters,  known  as  political  parties,  and 
the  one  got  the  office  which  bought  the  most  votes.  Now 
and  then  the  election  was  very  close,  and  that  was  the 
time  the  poor  man  came  in.  In  the  stockyards  this  was 
only  in  national  and  state  elections,  for  in  local  elections 
the  democratic  party  always  carried  everything.  The 
ruler  of  the  district  was  therefore  the  democratic  boss, 
a  little  Irishman  named  Mike  Scully.  Scully  held  an 
important  party  office  in  the  state,  and  bossed  even  the 
mayor  of  the  city,  it  was  said ;  it  was  his  boast  that  he 
carried  the  stockyards  in  his  pocket.  He  was  an  enor* 
mously  rich  man  —  he  had  a  hand  in  all  the  big  graft  in 
the  neighborhood.  It  was  Scully,  for  instance,  who  owned 
that  dump  which  Jurgis  and  Ona  had  seen  the  first  day 
of  their  arrival.  Not  only  did  he  own  the  dump,  but  he 
owned  the  brick-factory  as  well ;  and  first  he  took  out  the 
clay  and  made  it  into  bricks,  and  then  he  had  the  city 
bring  garbage  to  fill  up  the  hole,  so  that  he  could  build 
houses  to  sell  to  the  people.  Then,  too,  he  sold  the  bricks 
to  the  city,  at  his  own  price,  and  the  city  came  and  got 
them  in  its  own  wagons.  And  also  he  owned  the  other 
hole  near  by,  where  the  stagnant  water  was ;  and  it  was 
he  who  cut  the  ice  and  sold  it;  and  what  was  more,  if  the 
men  told  truth,  he  had  not  had  to  pay  any  taxes  for  the 
water,  and  he  had  built  the  ice-house  cut  of  city  lumber, 
and  had  not  had  to  pay  anything  for  that.  The  news- 


THE  JUNGLE 


ill 


papers  had  got  hold  of  that  story,  and  there  had  been  a 
scandal;  but  Scully  had  hired  somebody  to  confess  and 
take  all  the  blame,  and  then  skip  the  country.  It  was 
said,  too,  that  he  had  built  his  brick-kiln  in  the  same  way, 
and  that  the  workmen  were  on  the  city  pay-roll  while  they 
did  it;  however,  one  had  to  press  closely  to  get  these 
things  out  of  the  men,  for  it  was  not  their  business,  and 
Mike  Scully  was  a  good  man  to  stand  in  with.  A  note 
signed  by  him  was  equal  to  a  job  any  time  at  the  packing¬ 
houses  ;  and  also  he  employed  a  good  many  men  himself,  and 
worked  them  only  eight  hours  a  day,  and  paid  them  the 
highest  wages.  This  gave  him  many  friends — all  of  whom 
he  had  gotten  together  into  the  “War-Whoop  League,” 
whose  club-house  you  might  see  just  outside  of  the  yards. 
It  was  the  biggest  club-house,  and  the  biggest  club,  in  all 
Chicago ;  and  they  had  prize-fights  every  now  and  then, 
and  cock-fights  and  even  dog-fights.  The  policemen  in 
the  district  all  belonged  to  the  league,  and  instead  of  sup¬ 
pressing  the  fights,  they  sold  tickets  for  them.  The  man 
that  had  taken  Jurgis  to  be  naturalized  was  one  of  these 
“  Indians,”  as  they  were  called ;  and  on  election  day  there 
would  be  hundreds  of  them  out,  and  all  with  big  W’ads  of 
money  in  their  pockets  and  free  drinks  at  every  saloon  in 
the  district.  That  was  another  thing,  the  men  said  —  all 
the  saloon-keepers  had  to  be  “  Indians,”  and  to  put  up  on 
demand,  otherwise  they  could  not  do  business  on  Sundays, 
nor  have  any  gambling  at  all.  In  the  same  way  Scully 
had  all  the  jobs  in  the  fire  department  at  his  disposal,  and 
all  the  rest  of  the  city  graft  in  the  stockyards  district ;  he 
was  building  a  block  of  flats  somewhere  up  on  Ashland 
Avenue,  and  the  man  who  was  overseeing  it  for  him  was 
drawing  pay  as  a  city  inspector  of  sewers.  The  city  in¬ 
spector  of  water-pipes  had  been  dead  and  buried  for  over 
a  year,  but  somebody  was  still  drawing  his  pay.  The  city 
inspector  of  sidewalks  was  a  bar-keeper  at  the  War-Whoop 
cafe  —  and  maybe  he  could  not  make  it  uncomfortable  for 
any  tradesman  who  did  not  stand  in  with  Scully ! 

Ijven  the  packers  were  in  awe  of  him,  so  the  men  said. 
It  gave  them  pleasure  to  believe  this,  for  Scully  stood  as 


112 


THE  JUNGLE 


the  people’s  man,  and  boasted  of  it  boldly  when  election 
day  came.  The  packers  had  wanted  a  bridge  at  Ashland 
Avenue,  but  they  had  not  been  able  to  get  it  till  they  had 
seen  Scully  ;  and  it  was  the  same  with  “  Bubbly  Creek,” 
which  the  city  had  threatened  to  make  the  packers  cover 
over,  till  Scully  had  come  to  their  aid.  “Bubbly  Creek” 
is  an  arm  of  the  Chicago  River,  and  forms  the  southern 
boundary  of  the  yards ;  all  the  drainage  of  the  square  mile 
of  packing-houses  empties  into  it,  so  that  it  is  really  a  great 
open  sewer  a  hundred  or  two  feet  wide.  One  long  arm  of 
it  is  blind,  and  the  filth  stays  there  forever  and  a  day. 
The  grease  and  chemicals  that  are  poured  into  it  undergo 
all  sorts  of  strange  transformations,  which  are  the  cause 
of  its  name  ;  it  is  constantly  in  motion,  as  if  huge  fish  were 
feeding  in  it,  or  great  leviathans  disporting  themselves  in 
its  depths.  Bubbles  of  carbonic  acid  gas  will  rise  to  the 
surface  and  burst,  and  make  rings  two  or  three  feet  wide. 
Here  and  there  the  grease  and  filth  have  caked  solid,  and 
the  creek  looks  like  a  bed  of  lava ;  chickens  v/alk  about  on 
it,  feeding,  and  many  times  an  unwary  stranger  has  started 
to  stroll  across,  and  vanished  temporarily.  The  packers 
used  to  leave  the  creek  that  way,  till  every  now  and  then 
the  surface  would  catch  on  fire  and  burn  furiously,  and 
the  fire  department  would  have  to  come  and  put  it  out. 
Once,  however,  an  ingenious  stranger  came  and  started  to 
gather  this  filth  in  scows,  to  make  lard  out  of ;  then  the 
packers  took  the  cue,  and  got  out  an  injunction  to  stop 
him,  and  afterwards  gathered  it  themselves.  The  banks 
of  “Bubbly  Creek”  are  plastered  thick  with  hairs,  and 
this  also  the  packers  gather  and  clean. 

And  there  were  things  even  stranger  than  this,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  gossip  of  the  men.  The  packers  bad  secret 
mains,  through  which  they  stole  billions  of  gallons  of 
the  city’s  water.  The  newspapers  had  been  full  of  this 
scandal — once  there  had  even  been  an  investigation,  and 
an  actual  uncovering  of  the  pipes;  but  nobod’*  had  been 
punished,  and  the  thing  went  right  on.  /  .;hen  there 
was  the  condemned  meat  industry,  with  .  endless  hor¬ 
rors.  The  people  of  Chicago  saw  the  government  in- 


THE  JUNGLE 


US 


spectors  in  Packingtown,  and  they  all  took  that  to  mean 
that  they  were  protected  from  diseased  meat;  they  did 
not  understand  that  these  hundred  and  sixty-three  in¬ 
spectors  had  been  appointed  at  the  request  of  the  packers, 
and  that  they  were  paid  by  the  United  States  government 
to  certify  that  all  the  diseased  meat  was  kept  in  the  stateo 
They  liad  no  authority  beyond  that;  for  the  inspection 
of  meat  to  be  sold  in  the  city  and  state  the  whole  force 
in  Packingtown  consisted  of  three  henchmen  of  the  local 
political  machine  I*  And  shortly  afterward  one  of  these, 
a  physician,  made  the  discovery  that  the  carcasses  of 
steers  which  had  been  condemned  as  tubercular  by  the 
government  inspectors,  and  which  therefore  contained 
ptomaines,  which  are  deadly  poisons,  were  left  upon  an 
open  platform  and  carted  away  to  be  sold  in  the  city ; 
and  so  he  insisted  that  these  carcasses  be  treated  with 
an  injection  of  kerosene  —  and  was  ordered  to  resign 
the  same  week  I  So  indignant  were  the  packers  that 
they  went  farther,  and  compelled  the  mayor  to  abolish  the 
whole  bureau  of  inspection ;  so  that  since  then  there  has 
not  been  even  a  pretence  of  any  interference  with  the  graf^ 
There  was  said  to  be  two  thousand  dollars  a  week  hush^ 
money  from  the  tubercular  steers  alone  ;  and  as  much 

*  ••  Rules  and  Regulations  for  the  Inspection  of  Live  Stock  and  thei^ 
Products.”  United  States  Department  ot'Agriculture,  Bureau  of  Animal 
Industries,  Order  No.  125 :  —  ,  ; 

Section  1.  Proprietors  of  slaughterhouses,  canning,  salting,  packing, 
or  rendering  establishments  engaged  m  the  slaughtering  of  cattle,  sheep, 
or  swine,  or  the  packing  of  any  of  their  products,  the  carcasses  or  prod¬ 
ucts  of  which  are  to  become  subjects  of  interstate  or  foreign  commerce, 
shall  make  application  to  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture  for  inspection  of 
said  animals  and  tiieir  products.  „  .  . 

Section  15.  Such  rejected  or  condemned  animals  shall  at  once  be 
removed  by  the  owners  from  the  pens  containing  animals  which  have 
been  inspected  and  found  to  be  free  from  disease  and  fit  for  human  food, 
and  shall  be  disposed  of  in  accordance  with  the  taros,  ordinances,  and 
regulations  of  the  state  and  municipality  in  which  said  rejected  or  con- 
demned  animals  are  located.  , 

Section  25.  A  microscopic  examination  for  trichinae  shall  be  made  of 
all  swine  product  '-'ported  to  countries  requirfiig  such  examination,  Afo 
microscopic  exam^  .‘^,1  loill  be  made  of  hogs  slaughtered  for  interstate 
trade,  but  this  exanunation  shall  be  confined  to  those  intended  for  the 
export  trade. 


114 


THE  JUNGLE 


again  from  the  hogs  which  had  died  of  cholera  on  the 
trains,  and  which  you  might  see  any  day  being  loaded  into 
box-cars  and  hauled  away  to  a  place  called  Globe,  in  Indiana, 
where  they  made  a  fancy  grade  of  lard. 

Jurgis  heard  of  these  things  little  by  little,  in  the  gossip 
of  those  who  were  obliged  to  perpetrate  them.  It  seemed 
as  if  every  time  you  met  a  person  from  a  uew  department, 
you  heard  of  new  swindles  and  new  crimes.  There  was, 
for  instance,  a  Lithuanian  who  was  a  cattle- butcher  for  the 
plant  where  Marija  had  woi-ked,  which  killed  meat  for  can¬ 
ning  only ;  and  to  hear  this  man  describe  the  animals  which 
came  to  his  place  would  have  been  worth  while  for  a  Dante 
or  a  Zola.  It  seemed  that  they  must  have  agencies  all  over 
the  country,  to  hunt  out  old  and  crippled  and  diseased 
cattle  to  be  canned.  There  were  cattle  which  had 
been  fed  on  “  whiskey-malt,’’  the  refuse  of  the  brew¬ 
eries,  and  had  become  what  the  men.  called  “  steerly  ”  — . 
which  means  covered  with  boils.  It  was  a  nasty  job  kill¬ 
ing  these,  for  when  you  plunged  5''our  knife  into  them  they 
would  burst  and  splash  foul-smelling  stuff  into  your  face  ; 
and  when  a  man’s  sleeves  were  smeared  with  blood,  and  his 
hands  steeped  in  it,  how  was  he  ever  to  wipe  his  face,  or  to 
clear  his  eyes  so  that  he  could  see?  It  was  stuff  such  as 
this  that  made  the  “embalmed  beef”  that  had  killed  sev¬ 
eral  times  as  many  United  States  soldiers  as  all  the  bullets 
of  the  Spaniards ;  only  the  army  beef,  besides,  was  not 
fresh  canned,  it  was  old  stuff  that  had  been  lying  for 
years  in  the  cellars. 

Then  one  Sunday  evening,  Jurgis  sat  puffing  his  pipe  by 
the  kitchen  stove,  and  talking  with  an  old  fellow  whom 
Jonas  had  introduced,  and  who  worked  in  the  canning- 
rooms  at  Durham’s;  and  so  Jurgis  learned  a  few  things 
about  the  great  and  only  Durham  canned  goods,  which 
had  become  a  national  institution.  They  were  regular 
alchemists  at  Durham’s ;  they  advertised  a  mushroom.- 
catsup,  and  the  men  who  made  it  did  not  know  what  a 
mushroom  looked  like.  They  advertised  “  potted  chicken,’’ 
-—and  it  was  like  the  boarding-house  soup  of  the  comio 
papers,  through  which  a  chicken  had  walked  with  rub 


THE  JUNGLE 


115 


bers  on.  Perhaps  they  had  a  secret  pro  cess  for  makiog 
chickens  chemically  —  who  knows?  said  Jurgis’s  friend; 
the  things  that  went  into  the  mixture  were  tripe,  and 
the  fat  of  pork,  and  beef  suet,  and  hearts  of  beef,  and 
finally  the  waste  ends  of  veal,  when  they  had  any.  They 
put  these  up  in  several  grades,  and  sold  them  at  several 
prices;  but  the  contents  of  the  cans  all  came  out  of  the 
same  hopper.  And  then  there  was  “potted  game”  and 
“  potted  grouse,”  “  potted  ham,”  and  “  devilled  ham  ”  — 
de-vyled,  as  the  men  called  it.  “  De-vyled  ”  ham  was 
made  out  of  the  waste  ends  of  smoked  beef  that  were 
too  small  to  be  sliced  by  the  machines;  and  also  tripe, 
dyed  with  chemicals  so  that  it  would  not  show  white; 
and  trimmings  of  hams  and  corned  beef;  and  potatoes, 
skins  and  all ;  and  finally  the  hard  cartilaginous  gullets 
of  beef,  after  the  tongues  had  been  cut  out.  All  this 
ingenious  mixture  was  ground  up  and  flavored  with 
spices  to  make  it  taste  like  something.  Anybody  who 
could  invent  a  new  imitation  had  been  sure  of  a  fortune 
from  old  Durham,  said  Jurgis’s  informant;  but  it  was 
hard  to  think  of  anything  new  in  a  place  where  so  many 
sharp  wits  had  been  at  work  for  so  long:  where  men  wel¬ 
comed  tuberculosis  in  the  cattle  they  were  feeding,  because 
it  made  them  fatten  more  quickly;  and  where  they  bought 
up  all  the  old  rancid  butter  left  over  in  the  grocery -stores  of 
a  continent,  and  “  oxidized  ”  it  by  a  forced-air  process,  to 
take  away  the  odor,  rechurned  it  with  skim-milk,  and  sold 
it  in  bricks  in  the  cities  1  Up  to  a  year  or  two  ago  it  had 
been  the  custom  to  kill  horses  in  the  yards  —  ostensibly 
for  fertilizer ;  but  after  long  agitation  the  newspapers  had 
been  able  to  make  the  public  realize  tliat  the  horses  were 
being  canned.  Now  it  was  against  the  law  to  kill  horses  in 
Packingtown,  and  the  law  was  really  complied  with  —  for 
the  present,  at  any  rate.  Any  day,  however,  one  might 
see  sharp-horned  and  shaggy-haired  creatures  running 
with  the  sheep  —  and  yet  what  a  job  you  would  have  to 
get  the  public  to  believe  that  a  good  part  of  what  it  buys 
for  lamb  and  mutton  is  really  goat’s  flesh  I 

There  was  another  interesting  set  of  statistics  that  a 


116 


THE  JUNGLE 


persou  might  have  gathered  in  Packingtown  —  those  ot  the 
various  alHictions  of  the  workers.  When  Jurgis  had  first 
inspected  the  packing-plants  vvith  Szedvilas,  he  had  mar- 
*reiled  while  he  listened  to  the  tale  of  all  the  things  that 
were  made  out  of  the  carcasses  of  animals,  and  of  all  the 
lesser  industries  that  were  maintained  there ;  now  he 
found  that  each  one  of  these  lesser  industries  was  a 
separate  little  inferno,  in  its  way  as  horrible  as  the 
killing-beds,  the  source  and  fountain  of  them  all.  The 
workers  in  each  of  them  had  their  own  peculiar  diseases. 
And  the  wandering  visitor  might  be  sceptical  about  all 
the  swindles,  but  he  could  not  be  sceptical  about  these, 
for  the  worker  bore  the  evidence  of  them  about  on  his 
own  person  —  generally  he  had  only  to  hold  out  his 
hand. 

There  were  the  men  in  the  pickle-rooms,  for  instance, 
where  old  Antanas  had  gotten  his  death ;  scarce  a  one  of 
these  that  had  not  some  spot  of  horror  on  his  person. 
Let  a  man  so  much  as  scrape  his  finger  pushing  a  truck 
in  the  pickle-rooms,  and  he  might  have  a  sore  that  would 
put  him  out  of  the  world;  all  the  joints  in  his  fingers 
might  be  eaten  by  the  acid,  one  by  one.  Of  the  butchers 
and  floorsmeu,  the  beef-boners  and  trimmers,  ana  all  those 
who  used  knives,  you  could  scarcely  find  a  person  who 
had  the  use  of  his  thumb;  time  and  time  again  the  base 
of  it  had  been  slashed,  till  it  was  a  mere  lump  of  flesh 
against  which  the  man  pressed  the  knife  to  hold  it.  The 
hands  of  these  men  would  be  criss-crossed  with  cuts,  until 
you  could  no  longer  pretend  to  count  them  or  to  trace 
them.  They  would  have  no  nails,  — they  had  worn  them 
off  pulling  hides  ;  their  knuckles  were  swollen  so  that 
their  fingers  spread  out  like  a  fan.  There  were  men  who 
worked  in  the  cooking-rooms,  in  the  midst  of  steam  and 
sickening  odors,  by  artificial  light;  in  these  rooms  the 
germs  of  tuberculosis  might  live  for  two  years,  but  the 
supply  was  renewed  every  hour.  There  were  the  beef- 
luggers,  who  carried  two-hundred-pound  quarters  into 
the  refrigerator-cars  ;  a  fearful  kind  of  v'ork,  that  began 
at  four  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and  that  wore  out  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


117 


most  powerful  men  in  a  few  years.  There  were  those 
who  worked  in  the  chilling-rooms,  and  whose  special 
disease  was  rheumatism;  the  time-limit  that  a  man  could 
work  in  the  chilling-rooms  was  said  to  be  five  years. 
iThere  were  the  wool-pluckers,  whose  hands  went  to 
pieces  even  sooner  than  the  hands  of  the  pickle-men; 
for  the  pelts  of  the  sheep  had  to  be  painted  ^vith  acid 
to  loosen  the  wool,  and  then  the  piuckers  had  to  pull 
out  this  wool  with  their  bare  hands,  till  the  acid  had 
eaten  their  fingers  off.  There  were  those  who  made  the 
tins  for  the  canned-meat ;  and  their  hands,  too,  were  a 
maze  of  cuts,  and  each  cut  represented  a  chance  for  blood- 
poisoning.  Some  worked  at  the  stamping-machines,  and 
it  was  very  seldom  that  one  could  work  long  there  at  the 
pace  that  was  set,  and  not  give  out  and  forget  himself, 
and  have  a  part  of  his  hand  chopped  off.  There  were  the 
“  holsters,”  as  they  were  called,  whose  task  it  was  to  press 
the  lever  which  lifted  the  dead  cattle  off  the  floor.  They 
ran  along  upon  a  rafter,  peering  down  through  the  damp 
and  the  steam  ;  and  as  old  Durham’s  architects  had  not 
built  the  killing-room  for  the  convenience  of  the  hoisters, 
at  every  few  feet  they  would  have  to  stoop  under  a  beam, 
say  four  feet  above  the  one  they  ran  on  ;  which  got  them 
into  the  habit  of  stooping',  so  that  in  a  few  years  they 
wo'uld  be  walking  like  chimpanzees.  Worst  of  any,  how¬ 
ever,  were  the  fertilizer-men,  and  those  who  served  in  the 
cooking-rooms.  These  people  could  not  be  shown  to 
the  visitor,  —  for  the  odor  of  a  fertilizer-man  would  scare 
any  ordinary  visitor  at  a  hundred  yards,  and  as  for  the 
other  men,  who  worked  in  tank-rooms  full  of  steam,  and 
in  some  of  which  there  were  open  vats  near  the  level  of  the 
floor,  their  peculiar  trouble  was  that  they  fell  into  the  vats ; 
and  when  they  were  fished  out,  there  was  never  enough 
of  them  left  to  be  worth  exhibiting,  —  sometimes  they 
would  be  overlooked  for  days,  till  all  but  the  bones  of 
them  had  gone  out  to  the  world  as  Durham’s  Pure  Leaf 
Lard  I 


CHAPTER  X 


During  the  early  part  of  the  winter  the  family  had  had 
money  enough  to  live  and  a  little  over  to  pay  their  debts 
with ;  but  when  the  earnings  of  Jurgis  fell  from  nine  or 
ten  dollars  a  week  to  five  or  six,  there  was  no  longer  any¬ 
thing  to  spare.  The  winter  went,  and  the  spring  came, 
and  found  them  still  living  thus  from  hand  to  mouth, 
hanging  on  day  by  day,  with  literally  not  a  month’s 
wages  between  them  and  starvation.  Marija  was  in 
despair,  for  there  was  still  no  word  about  the  reopen¬ 
ing  of  the  canning-factory,  and  her  savings  were  al¬ 
most  entirely  gone.  She  had  had  to  give  up  all  idea  of 
marrying  then  ;  the  family  could  not  get  along  without 
her — though  for  that  matter  she  was  likely  soon  to 
become  a  fiurden  even  upon  them,  for  when  her  money 
was  all  gone,  they  would  have  to  pay  back  what  they 
owed  her  in  board.  So  Jurgis  and  Ona  and  Teta 
Elzbieta  would  hold  anxious  conferences  until  late  at 
night,  trying  to  figure  how  they  could  manage  this  too 
without  starving. 

Such  were  the  cruel  terms  upon  which  their  life  was 
possible,  that  they  might  never  have  nor  expect  a  single 
instant’s  respite  from  worry,  a  single  instant  in  which  they 
were  not  haunted  by  the  thought  of  money.  They  would 
no  sooner  escape,  as  by  a  miracle,  from  one  difficulty,  than 
a  new  one  would  come  into  view.  In  addition  to  all  their 
physical  hardships,  there  was  thus  a  constant  strain  upon 
their  minds  ;  they  were  harried  all  day  and  nearly  all  night 
by  worry  and  fear.  This  was  in  truth  not  living  ;  it  was 
scarcely  even  existing,  and  they  felt  that  it  was  too  little 
for  the  price  they  paid.  They  were  willing  to  work  all 

118 


THE  JUNGLE 


119 


the  time ;  and  when  people  did  their  best,  ought  they  not 
to  be  able  to  keep  alive  ? 

There  seemed  never  to  be  an  end  to  the  things  they  had 
to  buy  and  to  the  unforeseen  contingencies.  Once  their 
water-pipes  froze  and  burst ;  and  when,  in  their  ignorance, 
they  thawed  them  out,  they  had  a  terrifying  flood  in  their 
house.  It  happened  while  the  men  were  away,  and  poor 
Elzbieta  rushed  out  into  the  street  screaming  for  help,  for 
she  did  not  even  know  whether  the  flood  could  be  stopped, 
or  whether  they  were  ruined  for  life.  It  was  nearly  as  bad 
as  the  latter,  they  found  in  the  end,  for  the  plumber  charged 
them  seventy -five  cents  an  hour,  and  seventy -five  cents  for 
another  man  who  had  stood  and  watched  him,  and  included 
all  the  time  the  two  had  been  going  and  coming,  and  also 
a  charge  for  all  sorts  of  material  and  extras.  And  then 
again,  when  they  went  to  pay  their  .January’s  instalment 
on  the  house,  the  agent  terrified  them  by  asking  them  if 
they  had  had  the  insurance  attended  to  yet.  In  answer  to 
their  inquiry  he  showed  them  a  clause  in  the  deed  which 
provided  that  they  were  to  keep  the  house  insured  for  one 
thousand  dollars,  as  soon  as  the  present  policy  ran  out, 
which  would  happen  in  a  few  days.  Poor  Elzbieta,  upon 
whom  again  fell  the  blow,  demanded  how  much  it  would 
cost  them.  Seven  dollars,  the  man  said ;  and  that  night 
came  Jurgis,  grim  and  determined,  requesting  that  the 
agent  would  be  good  enough  to  inform  him,  once  for  all, 
as  to  all  the  expenses  they  were  liable  for.  The  deed  was 
signed  now,  he  said,  with  sarcasm  proper  to  the  new  way 
of  life  he  had  learned  —  the  deed  was  signed,  and  so  the 
agent  had  no  longer  anything  to  gain  by  keeping  quiet. 
And  Jurgis  looked  the  fellow  squarely  in  the  eye,  and  so 
he  did  not  waste  any  time  in  conventional  protests,  but 
read  him  the  deed.  They  would  have  to  renew  the  insur¬ 
ance  every  year ;  they  would  have  to  pay  the  taxes,  about 
ten  dollars  a  year ;  they  would  have  to  pay  the  water-tax, 
about  six  dollars  a  year —  (Jurgis  silently  resolved  to  shut 
off  the  hydrant).  This,  besides  the  interest  and  the 
monthly  instalments,  would  be  all  —  unless  by  chance  the 
city  should  happen  to  decide  to  put  in  a  sewer  or  to  lay  a 


120 


THE  JUNGLE 


sidewalk.  Yes,  said  the  agent,  they  would  have  to  Ime 
these,  whether  they  wanted  them  or  not,  if  the  city  said 
so.  The  sewer  would  cost  them  about  twenty-two  dol¬ 
lars,  and  the  sidewalk  fifteen  if  it  were  wood,  twenty-five 
if  it  were  cement. 

So  Jurgis  went  home  again  ;  it  was  a  relief  to  know  the 
worst,  at  any  rate,  so  that  he  could  no  more  be  surprised 
by  fresh  demands.  He  saw  now  how  they  had  been  plun¬ 
dered  ;  but  they  were  in  for  it,  there  was  no  turning  back. 
They  could  onlj^-  go  on  and  make  the  fight  and  win  —  for 
defeat  was  a  thing  that  could  not  even  be  thought  of. 

When  the  springtime  came,  they  were  delivered  from 
the  dreadful  cold,  and  that  was  a  great  deal ;  but  in  addi¬ 
tion  they  had  counted  on  the  money  they  would  not  have 
to  pay  for  coal  —  and  it  was  just  at  this  time  that  Marija’s 
board  began  to  fail.  Then,  too,  the  warm  weather  brought 
trials  of  its  own  ;  each  season  had  its  trials,  as  they  found. 
In  the  spring  there  were  cold  rains,  that  turned  the  streets 
into  canals  and  bogs  ;  the  mud  would  bo  so  deep  that 
wagons  would  sink  up  to  the  hubs,  so  that  half  a  dozen 
horses  could  not  move  them.  Then,  of  course,  it  was  im¬ 
possible  for  any  one  to  get  to  work  with  dry  feet ;  and  this 
was  bad  for  men  that  were  poorly  clad  and  shod,  and  still 
worse  for  women  and  children.  Later  came  midsummer, 
with  the  stifling  heat,  when  the  dingy  killing-beds  of 
Durham’s  became  a  very  purgatory ;  one  time,  in  a 
single  day,  three  men  feU  dead  from  sunstroke.  All  day 
long  the  rivers  of  hot  blood  poured  forth,  until,  with  the 
sun  beating  down,  and  the  air  motionless,  the  stench  was 
enough  to  knock  a  man  over ;  all  the  old  smells  of  a  genera¬ 
tion  would  be  drawn  out  by  this  heat  —  for  there  was  never 
any  washing  of  the  walls  and  rafters  and  pillars,  and  they 
were  caked  with  the  filth  of  a  lifetime.  The  men  who 
worked  on  the  killing-beds  would  come  to  reek  with  foul¬ 
ness,  so  that  you  could  smell  one  of  them  fifty  feet  away; 
there  was  simply  no  such  thing  as  keeping  decent,  the 
most  careful  man  gave  it  up  in  the  end,  and  wallowed  in 
uncleanness.  There  was  not  even  a  place  where  a  man 
could  wash  his  hands,  and  the  men  ate  as  much  raw  blood 


THE 


121 


as  food  at  dinner-time.  When  they  were  at  work  they 
could  not  even  wipe  off  their  faces  —  they  were  as  helpless 
as  newly  born  babes  in  that  respect ;  and  it  may  seem  like 
a  small  matter,  but  when  the  sweat  began  to  run  down  their 
necks  and  tickle  them,  or  a  fly  to  bother  them,  it  was  a  tor¬ 
ture  like  being  burned  alive.  Whether  it  was  the  slaugh¬ 
ter-houses  or  the  dumps  that  were  responsible,  one  could 
not  say,  but  with  the  hot  weather  there  descended  upon 
Packingtown  a  veritable  Egyptian  plague  of  flies  ;  there 
could  be  no  describing  this  —  the  houses  would  be  black 
with  them.  There  was  no  escaping  ;  you  might  provide 
all  your  doors  and  windows  with  screens,  but  their  buzzing 
outside  would  be  like  the  swarming  of  bees,  and  whenever 
you  opened  the  door  they  would  rush  in  as  if  a  storm  of 
wind  were  driving  them. 

Perhaps  the  summer-time  suggests  to  you  thoughts  of 
the  country,  visions  of  green  tields  and  mountains  and 
sparkling  lakes.  It  had  no  such  suggestion  for  the  people 
in  the  yards.  The  great  packing-machine  ground  on 
remorselessly,  without  thinking  of  green  fields  ,  and  the 
men  and  women  and  children  who  were  part  of  it  never 
saw  any  green  thing,  not  even  a  flower.  Four  or  five  miles 
to  the  east  of  them  lay  the  blue  waters  of  Lake  Michigan  ; 
but  for  all  the  good  it  did  Shem  it  might  have  been  as  far 
away  as  the  Pacific  Ocean.  They  had  only  Sundays,  and 
then  they  were  too  tired  to  walk.  They  were  tied  to  the 
great  packing-machine,  and  tied  to  it  for  life.  The  man¬ 
agers  and  superintendents  and  clerks  of  Packingtown  were 
all  recruited  from  another  class,  and  never  from  the 
workers  ;  they  scorned  the  workers,  the  very  meanest  of 
them.  A  poor  devil  of  a  bookkeeper  who  had  been  work¬ 
ing  in  Durham’s  for  twenty  years  at  a  salary  of  six  dollars 
a  week,  and  might  work  there  for  twenty  more  and  do  no 
better,  would  yet  consider  himself  a  gentleman,  as  far 
removed  as  the  poles  from  the  most  skilled  worker  on  the 
killing-beds ;  he  would  dress  differently,  and  live  in 
another  part  of  the  town,  and  come  to  work  at  a  different 
hour  of  the  day,  and  in  every  way  make  sure  that  he  never 
rubbed  elbows  with  a  laboring -man.  Perhaps  this  waf 


9 


122 


THE  JUNGLE 


due  to  the  repulsiveness  of  the  work  ;  at  any  rate,  the 
people  who  worked  with  their  hands  were  a  class  apart, 
and  were  made  to  feel  it. 

In  the  late  spring  the  canning-factory  started  up  again,  and 
so  once  more  Marija  was  heard  to  sing,  and  the  love-music 
of  Tamoszius  took  on  a  less  melancholy  tone.  It  was  not 
for  long,  however ;  for  a  month  or  two  later  a  dreadful 
calamity  fell  upon  Marija.  Just  one  year  and  three  days 
after  she  had  begun  work  as  a  can-painter,  she  lost  her 
job. 

It  was  a  long  story.  Marija  insisted  that  it  was  because 
of  her  activity  in  the  union.  The  packers,  of  course,  had 
spies  in  all  the  unions,  and  in  addition  they  made  a  prac¬ 
tice  of  buying  up  a  certain  number  of  the  union  officials,  as 
many  as  they  thought  they  needed.  So  every  week  they 
received  reports  as  to  what  was  going  on,  and  often  they 
knew  things  before  the  members  of  the  union  knew  them. 
Any  one  who  was  considered  to  be  dangerous  by  them 
would  find  that  he  was  not  a  favorite  with  his  boss  ;  and 
Marija  had  been  a  great  hand  for  going  after  the  foreign 
people  and  preaching  to  them.  However  that  might  be, 
the  known  facts  were  that  a  few  weeks  before  the  factory 
closed,  Marija  had  been  cheated  out  of  her  pay  for  three 
hundred  cans.  The  girls  v/orked  at  a  long  table,  and 
behind  them  walked  a  woman  with  pencil  and  notebook, 
keeping  count  of  the  number  they  finished.  This  woman 
was,  of  course,  only  human,  and  sometimes  made  mistakes; 
when  this  happened,  there  v/as  no  redress — if  on  Saturday 
you  got  less  money  than  you  had  earned,  you  had  to  make 
the  best  of  it.  But  Marija  did  not  understand  this,  and 
made  a  disturbance.  Marija’s  disturbances  did  not  mean 
anything,  and  while  she  had  known  only  Lithuanian  and 
Polish,  they  had  done  no  harm,  for  people  only  laughed 
at  her  and  made  her  cry.  But  now  Marija  was  able  to  call 
names  in  English,  and  so  she  got  the  woman  who  made 
the  mistake  to  disliking  her.  Probably,  as  Marija  claimed, 
she  made  mistakes  on  purpose  after  that ;  at  any  rate,  she 
made  them,  and  the  third  time  it  happened  Marija  went 
on  the  war-path  and  took  the  matter  first  to  the  forelady. 


THE  JUNGLE 


123 


and  when  she  got  no  satisfaction  there,  to  the  superin¬ 
tendent.  This  was  unheard-of  presumption,  but  the  super¬ 
intendent  said  he  would  see  about  it,  whicii  Marija  took  to 
mean  that  she  was  going  to  get  her  money  ;  after  waiting 
three  days,  she  went  to  see  the  superintendent  again. 
This  time  the  man  frowned,  and  said  that  he  had  not  hac. 
time  to  attend  to  it  ;  and  when  Marija,  against  the  advice 
and  warning  of  every  one,  tried  it  once  more,  he  ordered 
her  back  to  her  work  in  a  passion.  Just  how  things  hap¬ 
pened  after  tliat  Marija  was  not  sure,  but  that  afternoon 
the  forelady  told  her  that  her  services  would  not  be  any 
longer  required.  Poor  Marija  could  not  have  been  more 
dumfounded  had  the  wom_an  knocked  her  over  the  head  ; 
at  first  she  could  not  believe  what  she  heard,  and  then 
she  grew  furious  and  swore  that  she  would  come  anyway, 
that  her  place  belonged  to  her.  In  the  end  she  sat  down 
in  the  middle  of  the  floor  and  wept  and  wailed. 

It  was  a  cruel  lesson  ;  but  then  Marija  was  headstrong — ' 
she  should  have  listened  to  those  who  had  had  experience. 
The  next  time  she  would  know  her  place,  as  the  forelady 
expressed  it ;  and  so  Marija  went  out,  and  the  family 
raced  the  problem  of  an  existence  again. 

It  was  especially  hard  this  time,  for  Ona  was  to  be  con¬ 
fined  before  long,  and  Jurgis  was  trying  hard  to  save  up 
money  for  this.  He  had  heard  dreadful  stories  of  the  mid¬ 
wives,  who  grow  as  thick  as  fleas  in  Packingtown  ;  and  he 
had  made  up  his  mind  that  Ona  must  have  a  man-doctor. 
Jurgis  could  be  very  obstinate  when  he  wanted  to,  and 
he  was  in  this  case,  much  to  the  dismay  of  the  women, 
who  felt  that  a  man-doctor  was  an  impropriety,  and  that 
the  matter  really  belonged  to  them.  The  cheapest  doctor 
they  could  find  would  charge  them  fifteen  dollars,  and 
perhaps  more  when  the  bill  came  in  ;  and  here  was  Jurgis, 
declaring  that  he  would  pay  it,  even  if  he  had  to  stop  eat¬ 
ing  in  the  meantime ! 

Marija  had  only  about  twenty-five  dollars  left.  Day 
after  day  she  wand''  red  about  the  yards  begging  a  job,  but 
this  time  without  hope  of  finding  it.  Marija  could  do  the 
work  of  an  able-bo(^ed  man,  when  she  was  cheerful,  but 


124 


i:HE  JUNGLE 


discouragement  wore  her  out  easily,  and  she  would  come 
home  at  night  a  pitiable  object.  She  learned  her  lesson 
this  time,  poor  creature ;  she  learned  it  ten  times  over. 
All  the  family  learned  it  along  with  her  —  that  when  you 
have  once  got  a  job  in  Packingtown,  you  hang  on  to  it, 
come  what  will. 

Four  weeks  Marija  hunted,  and  half  of  a  fifth  week. 
Of  course  she  stopped  paying  her  dues  to  the  union. 
She  lost  all  interest  in  the  union,  and  cursed  herself  for  a 
fool  that  she  had.  ever  been  dragged  into  one.  She  had 
about  made  up  her  mind  that  she  was  a  lost  soul,  when 
somebody  told  her  of  an  opening,  and  she  went  and  got 
a  place  as  a  “beef -trimmer.”  She  got  this  because  the 
boss  saw  that  she  had  the  muscles  of  a  man,  and  so  he 
discharged  a  man  and  put  Marija  to  do  his  work,  paying 
her  a  little  more  than  half  what  he  had  been  paying 
before. 

When  she  first  came  to  Packingtown,  Marija  would 
Lave  scorned  such  work  as  this.  She  was  in  another 
canning-factory,  and  her  work  was  to  trim  the  meat  of 
those  diseased  cattle  that  Jurgis  had  been  told  about  not 
long  before.  She  was  shut  up  in  one  of  the  rooms  where 
the  people  seldom  saw  the  daylight ;  beneath  her  were  the 
chilling-rooms,  where  the  meat  w^as  frozen,  and  above  her 
were  the  cooking-rooms ;  and  so  she  stood  on  an  ice-cold 
floor,  while  her  head  v/as  often  so  hot  that  she  could 
scarcely  breathe.  Trimming  beef  off  the  bones  by  the 
hundred-weight,  while  standing  up  from  early  morning 
till  late  at  night,  with  heavy  boots  on  and  the  floor  always 
damp  and  full  of  puddles,  liable  to  be  thrown  out  of  work 
'"definitely  because  of  a  slackening  in  the  trade,  liable 
again  to  be  kept  overtime  in  rush  seasons,  and  be  worked 
till  she  trembled  in  every  nerve  and  lost  her  grip  on  her 
slimy  knife,  and  gave  herself  a  poisoned  wound  —  that 
was  the  new  life  that  unfolded  itself  before  Marija.  But 
because  Marija  was  a  human  horse  she  merely  laughed 
and  went  at  it ;  it  would  enable  her  to  pay  her  board 
again,  and  keep  the  family  going.  And  as  for  Tamoszius 
—  well,  they  had  waited  a  long  time,  and  they  could  v/ait 


THE  flXJNHUfi 


125 


a  little  longer.  They  could  not  possibly  get  along  apon 
his  wages  alone,  and  the  family  could  not  live  yithoui 
hers.  He  could  come  and  visil.  her,  and  sit  in  the  kitchen 
and  hold  her  hand,  and  he  must  manage  to  be  content 
with  that.  But  day  by  day  the  music  of  Tamoszius's 
violin  became  more  passionate  and  heart-breaking ;  and 
Marija  would  sit  with  her  hands  clasped  and  her  cheeks 
v/et  and  all  ner  body  a-tremble,  hearing  in  the  wailing 
melodies  the  voices  of  the  unborn  generations  which 
cried  out  in  her  for  life. 

Marija’s  lesson  came  just  in  time  to  save  Ona  from  a 
similar  fate.  Ona,  too,  was  dissatisfied  v/ith  hei  place,  and 
had  far  more  reason  than  Marija.  She  did  noii  tell  half 
of  her  stoiy  at  home,  because  she  saw  it  was  a  torment 
to  Jurgis,  and  she  was  afraid  of  what  he  might  do.  For 
a  long  time  Ona  had  seen  that  Miss  Henderson,  the  fore- 
lady  in  her  department,  did  not  like  her.  At  first  she 
thought  it  was  the  old-time  mistake  she  had  made  in  ask¬ 
ing  for  a  holiday  to  get  married.  Then  she  concluded 
it  must  be  because  she  did  not  give  the  forelady  a  present 
occasionally  —  she  was  the  kind  that  took  presents  from 
the  girls,  Ona  learned,  and  made  all  sorts  of  discrimina¬ 
tions  ill  favor  of  those  who  gave  them.  In  the  end,  how¬ 
ever,  Ona  discovered  that  it  was  even  worse  than  that. 
Miss  Henderson  was  a.  newcomer,  and  it  was  some  time 
before  rumor  made  her  out ;  but  finally  it  transpired  that 
she  was  a  kept-woman,  the  former  mistress  of  the  superin¬ 
tendent  of  a  department  in  the  same  building.  He  had 
put  her  there  to  keep  her  quiet,  it  seemed  —  and  that  not 
altogether  with  success,  for  once  or  twice  they  had  been 
heard  quarrelling.  She  had  the  temper  of  i  hyena,  and 
soon  the  place  she  ran  was  a  witch’s  cahlron.  There 
were  some  of  the  girls  who  were  of  her  o  ,vn  sort,  who 
were  willing  to  toady  to  her  and  flatter  her ;  and  these 
would  carry  tales  about  the  rest,  and  so  the  furies  were 
unchained  in  the  place.  Worse  than  this,  the  woman 
lived  in  a  bawdy-house  down-town,  with  a  coarse,  red-faced 
'rishman  named  Connor,  who  was  the  boas  of  the  loading- 


126 


THE 


gang  outside,  and  would  make  free  with  the  gdris  as  they 
went  to  and  from  their  work.  In  the  slack  seasons  some 
of  them  would  go  with  Miss  Henderson  to  this  house 
down-town  —  in  fact,  it  would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that 
she  managed  her  department  at  Brown’s  in  conjunction 
with  it.  Sometimes  women  from  the  house  would  be 
given  places  alongside  of  decent  girls,  and  after  other 
decent  girls  had  been  turned  off  to  make  room  for  them. 
When  you  worked  in  this  woman’s  department  the  house 
down-town  was  never  out  of  your  thoughts  all  day  —  there 
were  always  whiffs  of  it  to  be  caught,  like  the  odor  of  the 
Packingtown  rendering-plants  at  night,  w'hen  the  wind 
shifted  suddenly.  There  would  be  stories  about  it  going 
the  rounds  ;  the  girls  opposite  you  would  be  telling  them 
and  winking  at  you.  In  such  a  place  Ona  would  not 
have  stayed  a  clay,  but  for  starvation  ;  and,  as  it  was,  she 
was  never  sure  that  she  could  stay  the  next  day.  She 
understood  now  that  the  real  reason  that  Miss  Henderson 
hated  her  was  that  she  was  a  decent  married  girl ;  and 
she  knew  that  the  talebearers  and  the  toadies  hated  her 
for  the  same  reason,  and  were  doing  their  best  to  make 
her  life  miserable. 

But  there  was  no  place  a  girl  could  go  in  Packingtown, 
if  she  was  particular  about  things  of  this  sort ;  there  was 
no  place  in  it  where  a  prostitute  could  not  get  along  better 
than  a  decent  girl.  Here  was  a  population,  low-class  and 
mostly  foreign,  hanging  always  on  the  verge  of  starvation, 
and  dependent  for  its  opportunities  of  life  upon  the  whim 
of  men  every  bit  as  brutal  and  unscrupulous  as  the  old- 
time  slave-drivers;  under  such  circumstances  immorality 
was  exactly,  as  inevitable,  and  as  prevalent,  as  it  was  under 
the  system  of  chattel  slavery.  Things  that  were  quite 
unspeakable  went  on  there  in  the  packing-houses  all  the 
time,  and  v/ere  taken  for  granted  by  everybody  ;  only 
they  did  not  show,  as  in  the  old  slavery  times,  because 
ihere  was  no  difference  in  color  between  master  and  slave. 

One  mors  dug  Ona  stayed  home,  and  Jurgis  had  the 
tofian-doctor,  according  to  his  whim,  and  she  was  safely 


THE  JUNGLE 


127 


delivered  of  a  fine  baby.  It  was  an  enormous  big  boy, 
and  Ona  was  such  a  tinj  creature  herself,  that  it  seemed 
quite  incredible.  Jurgis  would  stand  and  gaze  at  the 
stranger  by  the  hour,  unable  to  believe  that  it  had  really 
happened. 

The  coming  of  this  boy  was  a  decisive  event  wich  Jurgis. 
It  made  him  irrevocably  a  family  man;  it  killed  the  last 
lingering  impulse  that  he  might  have  had  to  go  out  in  the 
evenings  and  sit  and  talk  with  the  men  in  the  saloons. 
There  was  nothing  he  cared  for  now  so  much  as  to  sit  and 
look  at  the  baby.  This  was  very  curious,  for  Jurgis  had 
never  been  interested  in  babies  before.  But  then,  this 
was  a  very  unusual  sort  of  a  baby.  He  had  the  brightest 
little  black  eyes,  and  little  black  ringlets  all  over  his  head; 
he  was  the  living  image  of  his  father,  everybody  said  — 
and  Jurgis  found  this  a  fascinating  circumstance.  It  was 
sufficiently  perplexing  that  this  tiny  mite  of  life  should 
have  come  into  the  world  at  all  in  the  manner  that  it  had; 
that  it  should  have  come  with  a  comical  imitation  of  its 
father’s  nose  was  simply  uncanny. 

Perhaps,  Jurgis  thought,  this  was  intended  to  signify 
that  it  was  his  baby ;  that  it  was  his  and  Ona’s,  to  care  for 
all  its  life.  Jurgis  had  never  possessed  anything  nearly 
so  interesting  —  a  baby  v/as,  when  you  came  to  think  about 
it,  assuredly  a  marvellous  possession.  It  would  grow  up 
to  be  a  man,  a  human  soul,  with  a  personality  all  its  own, 
a  will  of  its  own  I  Such  thoughts  would  keep  haunting 
Jurgis,  filling  him  with  all  sorts  of  strange  and  almost 
painful  excitements.  He  was  wonderfully  proud  of  little 
A.ntanas  ;  he  was  curious  about  all  the  details  of  him  —  the 
washing  and  the  dressing  and  the  eating  and  the  sleeping 
of  him,  and  asked  all  sorts  of  absurd  questions.  It  took 
him  quite  a  while  to  get  over  his  alarm  at  the  incredible 
shortness  of  the  little  creature’s  legs. 

Jurgis  had,  alas,  very  little  time  to  see  his  baby ;  he 
never  felt  the  chains  about  him  more  than  just  then. 
When  he  came  home  at  night,  the  baby  would  be  asleep, 
and  it  would  be  the  merest  chance  if  he  awoke  before 
J urgis  had  to  go  to  sleep  himself.  Then  in  the  morning 


128 


raic  JtTNGl*® 


there  was  no  time  to  look  at  hira,  so  really  the  only  chance 
the  father  had  was  on  Sundays.  This  was  more  cruel  yet 
for  Ona,  who  ought  to  have  stayed  home  and  nursed  Mm, 
the  doctor  said,  for  her  own  health  as  well  as  the  baby's  - 
but  Ona  had  to  go  to  work,  and  leave  him  for  Teta 
Elzbieta  to  feed  upon  the  pale  blue  poison  that  was  called 
milk  at  the  corner-grocery.  Ona’s  confinement  lost  her 
only  a  week’s  wages — she  would  go  to  the  factory  the 
second  Monday,  and  the  best  that  J  urgis  could  persuade 
her  was  to  ride  in  the  car,  and  let  him  run  along  behind 
and  help  her  to  Brown’s  when  she  alighted.  After  that 
it  would  be  all  right,  said  Ona,  it  was  no  strain  sitting 
still  sewing  hams  all  day ;  and  if  she  waited  longer  she 
might  find  that  her  dreadful  forelady  had  put  some  one 
else  in  her  place.  That  would  be  a  greater  calamity  than 
ever  now,  Ona  continued,  on  account  of  the  baby.  They 
would  all  have  to  work  harder  now  on  his  account.  It 
was  such  a  responsibilitj'’  —  they  must  not  have  the  baby 
grow  up  to  sufer  as  they  had.  And  this  indeed  had  been 
the  first  thing  that  Jurgis  had  thought  of  himself  —  he 
had  clenched  his  hands  and  braced  himself  anew  for  the 
struggle,  for  the  sake  of  that  tiny  mite  of  human  possibility. 

And  so  Ona  went  back  to  Brown’s  and  saved  her  place 
and  a  week’s  wages;  and  so  she  gave  herself  some  one  of 
the  thousand  ailments  that  women  group  under  the  title 
of  “  womb-trouble,”  and  was  never  again  a  v/ell  person  as 
long  as  she  lived.  It  is  difficult  to  convey  in  words  all 
that  this  meant  to  Ona;  it  seemed  such  a  slight  offence, 
and  the  punishment  was  so  out  of  all  proportion,  that 
neither  she  nor  any  one  else  ever  connected  the  two. 
“  Worn b-tro able”  to  Ona  did  not  mean  a  specialist’s 
diagnosis,  and  a  course  of  treatment,  and  perhaps  an  opera¬ 
tion  or  two;  it  meant  simply  headaches  and  pains  in  the 
bacit,  and  depression  and  heartsickness,  and  neuralgia 
when  she  had  to  go  to  work  in  the  rain.  The  great 
majority  of  the  women  who  worked  in  Packingtown 
suffered  in  the  same  way,  and  from  the  same  cause,  so  it 
was  not  deemed  a  thing  to  see  the  doctor  about  .  instead 
Ona  would  try  patent  medicines,  one  attei  another,  as 


Tfflfi  TO  NG-O; 


128 


ber  friends  told  her  about  them.  As  these  all  contaiiied 
alcohol,  or  some  other  stimulant,  she  found  that  they  all 
did  her  good  while  she  took  them  ;  and  so  she  was  always 
chasing  the  phantom  of  good  health,  and  losing  it  because 
she  was  too  poor  to  continue. 


CHAPTER  XI 


During  the  summer  the  packing-houses  were  in  fuli 
activity  again,  and  Jurgis  made  more  money.  He  did 
not  make  so  much,  however,  as  he  had  the  previous  sum¬ 
mer,  for  the  packers  took  on  more  hands.  There  were  new 
men  every  week,  it  seemed  —  it  was  a  regular  system ;  and 
this  number  they  would  keep  over  to  the  next  slack  season, 
so  that  every  one  would  have  less  than  ever.  Sooner  or 
later,  by  this  plan,  they  would  have  all  the  floating  labor 
of  Chicago  trained  to  do  their  work.  And  how  very  cun¬ 
ning  a  trick  was  that  I  The  men  were  to  teach  new  hands, 
who  would  some  day  come  and  break  their  strike;  and 
meantime  they  were  kept  so  poor  that  they  could  not 
prepare  for  the  trial  I 

But  let  no  one  suppose  that  this  superfluity  of  employees 
meant  easier  work  for  any  one!  On  the  contrary,  the 
speeding-up  seemed  to  be  growing  more  savage  all  the 
time;  they  were  continually  inventing  new  devices  to 
crowd  the  work  on— -it  was  for  all  the  wmrld  like  the 
thumb-screw  of  the  mediseval  torture-chamber.  They 
would  get  new  pace-makers  and  pay  them  more;  they 
would  drive  the  men  on  with  new  machinery  —  it  was 
said  that  in  the  hog-killing  rooms  the  speed  at  which 
the  hogs  moved  was  determined  by  clock-work,  and  that  it 
was  increased  a  little  every  day.  In  piece-work  they  would 
reduce  the  time,  requiring  the  same  work  in  a  shorter  time, 
and  paying  the  same  wages ;  and  then,  after  the  workers 
had  accustomed  themselves  to  this  new  speed,  they  would 
reduce  the  rate  of  payment  to  correspond  with  the  reduc¬ 
tion  in  time  I  They  had  done  this  so  often  in  the  canning 
establishments  that  the  girls  were  fairly  desperate ;  their 
wages  had  gone  down  by  a  full  third  in  the  past  two  years. 


THE  JUNGLE 


131 


and  a  storm  of  discontent  was  brewing  that  was  likely  to 
break  any  day.  Only  a  month  after  Marija  had  become  e 
beef-trimmer  the  canning-factory  that  she  had  left  posted 
a  cut  that  would  divide  the  girls’  earnings  almost  squarely 
in  half ;  and  so  great  was  the  indignation  at  this  that  they 
marched  out  wiUiout  even  a  parley,  and  organized  in  the 
street  outside.  One  of  the  girls  had  read  somewhere  that 
a  red  flag  was  the  proper  symbol  for  oppressed  workers, 
and  so  they  mounted  one,  and  paraded  all  about  the  yardrf, 
yelling  with  rage.  A  new  union  was  the  result  of  this 
outburst,  but  the  impromptu  strike  went  to  pieces  in  three 
days,  owing  to  the  rush  of  new  labor.  At  the  end  of  it 
the  girl  who  had  carried  the  red  flag  went  down-town  and 
got  a  position  in  a  great  department  store,  at  a  salary  of 
two  dollars  and  a  half  a  week. 

Jurgis  and  Ona  heard  these  stories  with  dismay,  for 
there  was  no  telling  when  their  own  time  might  come. 
Once  or  twice  there  had  been  rumors  that  one  of  the  big 
houses  was  going  to  cut  its  unskilled  men  to  fifteen  cents 
an  hour,  and  Jurgis  knew  that  if  this  was  done,  his  turn 
would  come  soon.  He  had  learned  by  this  time  that 
Packingtowa  was  really  not  a  number  of  firms  at  all,  but 
one  great  Arm,  the  Beef  Trust.  And  every  week  the 
managers  of  it  got  together  and  compared  notes,  and 
there  was  one  scale  for  all  the  woi’kers  in  the  yards  and 
one  standard  of  efficiency.  Jurgis  was  told  that  they  also 
fixed  the  price  they  would  pay  for  beef  on  the  hoof  and 
the  price  of  all  dressed  meat  in  the  country ;  but  that  was 
something  he  did  not  understand  or  care  about. 

The  only  one  who  was  not  afraid  of  a  cut  was  Marija,  ■ 
who  congratulated  herself,  somewhat  naively,  that  there 
had  been  one  in  her  place  only  a  short  time  before  she 
came.  Marija  was  getting  to  be  a  skilled  beef-trimmer, 
and  was  mounting  to  the  heights  again.  During  the  sum¬ 
mer  and  fall  Jurgis  and  Ona  managed  to  pay  her  back  the 
last  penny  they  owed  her,  and  so  she  began  to  have  a  bank 
account.  Tamoszius  had  a  bank  account  also,  and  they  ran 
a  race,  and  began  to  figure  upon  household  expenses  once 
more. 


132 


THE  JUNGLE 


The  possession  of  vast  wealth  entails  cares  and  respon¬ 
sibilities,  however,  as  poor  Marija  found  out.  She  had 
taken  the  advice  of  a  friend  and  invested  her  savings  in 
a  bank  on  Ashland  Avenue.  Of  course  she  knew  nothing 
about  it,  except  that  it  was  big  and  imposing  —  what  pos¬ 
sible  chance  has  a  poor  foreign  working-girl  to  understand 
the  banking  business,  as  it  is  conducted  in  this  land  of 
frenzied  finance?  So  Marija  lived  in  continual  dread 
lest  something  should  happen  to  her  bank,  and  would  go 
out  of  her  way  mornings  to  make  sure  that  it  was  still 
there.  Her  principal  thought  was  of  fire,  for  she  had 
deposited  her  money  in  bills,  and  was  afraid  that  if  they 
were  burned  up  the  bank  would  not  give  her  any  others. 
Jurgis  made  fun  of  her  for  this,  for  he  was  a  man  and  was 
proud  of  his  superior  knowledge,  telling  her  that  the  bank 
had  fire-proof  vaults,  and  all  its  millions  of  dollars  hidden 
safely  away  in  them. 

However,  one  morning  Marija  took  her  usual  detour, 
and,  to  her  horror  and  dismay,  saw  a  crowd  of  people  in 
front  of  the  bank,  filling  the  avenue  solid  for  half  a  block. 
All  the  blood  went  out  of  her  face  for  terror.  She  broke 
into  a  run,  shouting  to  the  people  to  ask  what  was  the 
matter,  but  not  stopping  to  hear  what  they  answered,  till 
she  had  come  to  v/here  the  throng  was  so  dense  that  she 
could  no  longer  advance.  There  was  a  “  run  on  the  bank,” 
they  told  her  then,  but  she  did  not  know  what  that  was, 
and  turned  from  one  person  to  another,  trying  in  an  agony 
of  fear  to  make  out  what  they  meant.  Had  something 
gone  wrong  with  the  bank?  Nobody  was  sure,  but  they 
thought  so.  Couldn’t  she  get  her  money?  There  was 
no  telling ;  the  people  were  afraid  not,  and  they  were 
all  trying  to  get  it.  It  was  too  early  yet  to  tell  anything 
-^the  bank  would  not  open  for  nearly  three  hours.  So  in 
a  frenzy  of  despair  Marija  began  to  claw  her  way  toward 
the  doors  of  this  building,  through  a  throng  of  men,  women, 
and  children,  all  as  excited  as  herself.  It  was  a  scene  of 
wild  confusion,  women  shrieking  and  wringing  their  hands 
and  fainting,  and  men  fighting  and  trampling  down  every¬ 
thing  in  their  way.  In  the  midst  of  the  meMe  Marija 


THE  JUNGLE 


133 


recollected  that  she  did  not  have  her  bank-book,  and  could 
not  get  her  money  anyway,  so  she  fought  her  way  out  and 
started  on  a  run  for  home.  This  was  fortunate  for  her, 
for  a  few  minutes  later  the  police-reserves  arrived. 

In  half  an  hour  Marija  was  back,  Teta  Elzbieta  with 
her,  both  of  them  breathless  with  running  and  sick  with 
fear.  The  crowd  was  now  formed  in  a  line,  extending 
for  several  blocks,  with  half  a  hundred  policemen  keeping 
guard,  and  so  there  was  nothing  for  them  to  do  but  to 
take  their  places  at  the  end  of  it.  At  nine  o’clock  the 
bank  opened  and  began  to  pay  the  waiting  throng ;  but 
then,  what  good  did  that  do  Marija,  who  saw  three  thou¬ 
sand  people  before  her  —  enough  to  take  out  the  last  penny 
of  a  dozen  banks? 

To  make  matters  worse  a  drizzling  rain  came  up,  and 
soaked  them  to  the  skin;  yet  all  the  morning  they  stood 
there,  creeping  slowly  toward  the  goal  —  all  the  after¬ 
noon  they  stood  there,  heart-sick,  seeing  that  the  hour  of 
closing  was  coming,  and  that  they  were  going  to  be  left 
out.  Marija  made  up  her  mind  that,  come  what  might, 
she  would  stay  there  and  keep  her  place ;  but  as  nearly  all 
did  the  same,  all  through  the  long,  cold  night,  she  got 
very  little  closer  to  the  bank  for  that.  Toward  evening 
Jurgis  came ;  he  had  heard  the  story  from  the  children, 
and  he  brought  some  food  and  dry  wraps,  which  made  it 
a  little  easier. 

The  next  morning,  before  daybreak,  came  a  bigger 
crowd  than  ever,  and  more  policemen  from  down-town. 
Marija  held  on  like  grim  death,  and  toward  afternoon  she 
got  into  the  bank  and  got  her  money  —  all  in  big  silver 
dollars,  a  handkerchief  full.  When  she  had  once  got 
her  hands  on  them  her  fear  vanished,  and  she  wanted  to 
put  them  back  again ;  but  the  man  at  the  window  was 
savage,  and  said  that  the  bank  would  receive  no  more 
deposits  from  those  who  had  taken  part  in  the  run.  So 
Marija  was  forced  to  take  her  dollars  home  with  her, 
watching  to  right  and  left,  expecting  every  instant  that 
some  one  would  try  to  rob  her ;  and  when  she  got  home 
she  was  not  much  better  off.  Until  she  could  find  another 


134 


THE  JUNGLE 


bank  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  sew  them  up  in  her 
clothes,  and  so  Marija  went  about  for  a  week  or  more, 
loaded  down  with  bullion,  and  afraid  to  cross  the  street 
in  front  of  the  house,  because  Jurgis  told  her  she  would 
sink  out  of  sight  in  the  mud.  Weighted  this  way  she 
made  her  way  to  the  yards,  again  in  fear,  this  time  to  see 
if  she  had  lost  her  place ;  but  fortunately  about  ten  per 
cent  of  the  working-people  of  Fackingtown  had  been 
depositors  in  that  bank,  and  it  was  not  convenient  to  dis¬ 
charge  that  many  at  once.  The  cause  of  the  panic  had 
been  the  attempt  of  a  policeman  to  arrest  a  drunken  man 
in  a  saloon  next  door,  which  had  drawn  a  crowd  at  the 
hour  the  people  were  on  their  way  to  work,  and  so  started 
the  “run.” 

About  this  time  Jurgis  and  Ona  also  began  a  bank- 
account.  Besides  ha'ving  paid  Jonas  and  Marija,  they 
had  almost  paid  for  their  furniture,  and  could  have  that 
little  sum  to  count  on.  So  long  as  each  of  them  could 
bring  home  nine  or  ten  dollars  a  week,  they  were  able  to 
get  along  finely.  Also  election  day  came  round  again, 
and  Jurgis  made  half  a  week’s  wages  out  of  that,  all  net 
profit.  It  was  a  very  close  election  that  year,  and  the 
echoes  of  the  battle  reached  even  to  Fackingtown.  The 
two  rival  sets  of  grafters  hired  halls  and  set  ofi’  fireworks 
and  made  speeches,  to  try  to  get  the  people  interested  ia 
the  matter.  Although  Jurgis  did  not  understand  it  all, 
he  knew  enough  by  this  time  to  realize  that  it  was  not 
supposed  to  be  right  to  sell  your  vote.  However,  as  every 
one  did  it,  and  his  refusal  to  join  would  nob  have  made 
the  slightest  difference  in  the  results,  the  idea  of  refusing 
would  have  seemed  absurd,  had  it  ever  come  into  iiis 
head. 

Now  chill  winds  and  shortening  days  began  to  warn 
them  that  the  winter  was  coming  again.  It  seemed  as  if 
the  respite  had  been  too  short — they  had  not  had  time 
enough  to  get  ready  for  it ;  but  still  it  came,  inexorably, 
and  the  hunted  look  began  to  come  back  into  the  eyes  of 
little  Stanisiovas.  The  prospect  struck  fear  to  the  heart 


THE  JUNGLE 


135 


of  Jurgis  also,  for  he  knew  that  Ona  was  not  fit  to  face 
the  cold  arad  the  snow-drifts  this  year.  And  suppose  that 
some  day  when  a  blizzard  struck  them  and  the  cars  were 
not  running,  Ona  should  have  to  give  it  up,  and  should 
come  the  next  day  to  find  that  her  place  had  been  given 
to  some  one  who  lived  nearer  and  could  be  depended  on? 

It  was  the  week  before  Christmas  that  the  first  great 
storm  came,  and  then  the  soul  of  Jurgis  rose  up  within 
him  like  a  sleeping  lion.  There  were  four  days  that  the 
Ashland  Avenue  cars  were  stalled,  and  in  those  days,  for 
the  first  time  in  his  life,  Jurgis  knew  what  it  was  to 
be  really  opposed.  He  had  faced  difficulties  before,  but 
they  had  been  child's  play  ;  now  there  was  a  death  strug¬ 
gle,  and  ail  tlie  furies  were  unchained  within  him.  The 
first  morning  they  set  out  two  hours  before  dawn,  Ona 
wrapped  all  in  blankets  and  tossed  upon  his  shoulder  like 
a  sack  of  meal,  and  the  little  boy,  bundled  nearly  out  v'f 
sight,  hanging  by  his  coat-tails.  There  was  a  raging  blast 
beating  in  his  face,  and  the  thermometer  stood  below  zero ; 
the  snow  was  never  short  of  his  knees,  and  in  some  of  the 
drifts  it  was  nearly  up  to  his  armpits.  It  would  catch 
his  feet  and  try  to  trip  him ;  it  would  build  itself  into 
a  wall  before  him  to  beat  him  back ;  and  he  would  fling 
himself  into  it,  plunging  like  a  wounded  buffalo,  puffing 
and  snorting  in  rage.  So  foot  by  foot  he  drove  his  way, 
and  when  at  last  he  came  to  Durham’s  he  was  stagger¬ 
ing  and  almost  blind,  and  leaned  against  a  pillar,  gasping, 
and  thanking  God  that  the  cattle  came  late  to  the  killing- 
beds  that  day.  In  the  evening  the  same  thing  had  to  be 
done  again;  and  because  Jurgis  could  not  tell  what  hour 
of  the  night  he  would  get  off,  he  got  a  saloon-keeper  to 
let  Ona  sit  and  wait  for  him  in  a  corner.  Once  it  was 
eleven  o’clock  at  night,  and  black  as  the  pit,  but  still  they 
got  home. 

That  blizzard  knocked  many  a  man  out,  for  the  crowd 
outside  begging  for  work  was  never  greater,  and  the 
packers  would  not  wait  long  for  any  one.  When  it  was 
over,  the  soul  of  Jurgis  was  a  song,  for  he  had  met  the 
enemy  and  conquered,  and  felt  himself  the  master  of  hi!> 


136 


THE  JUNGLE 


fate.  —  So  it  might  be  with  some  monarch  of  the  forest 
that  has  vanquished  his  foes  in  fair  fight,  and  then  falls 
into  some  cowardly  trap  in  the  night-time. 

A  time  of  peril  on  the  killing-beds  was  when  a  steer 
broke  loose.  Sometimes,  in  the  haste  of  speeding-up. 
they  would  dump  one  of  the  animals  out  on  the  floor 
before  it  was  fully  stunned,  and  it  would  get  upon  its  feet 
and  run  arnucJi.  Then  there  would  be  a  yell  of  warning 
—  the  men  would  drop  everything  and  dash  for  the 
nearest  pillar,  slipping  here  and  there  on  the  floor,  and 
tumbling  over  each  other.  This  was  bad  enough  in  the 
summer,  when  a  man  could  see  ;  in  winter-time  it  was 
enough  to  make  your  hair  stand  up,  for  the  room  would 
be  so  full  of  steam  that  you  could  not  make  anything  out 
five  feet  in  front  of  you.  To  be  sure,  the  steer  was  gen¬ 
erally  blind  and  frantic,  and  not  especially  bent  on  hurting 
any  one  ;  but  think  of  the  chances  of  running  upon  a 
knife,  while  nearly  every  man  had  one  in  his  hand  I 
And  then,  to  cap  the  climax,  the  floor-boss  would  come 
rushing  up  with  a  rifle  and  begin  blazing  away  I 

It  was  in  one  of  these  melees  that  J  urgis  fell  into  his 
trap.  That  is  toe  only  word  to  describe  it;  it  was  so 
cruel,  and  so  utterly  not  to  be  foreseen.  At  first  he 
hardly  noticed  it,  it  was  such  a  slight  accident  —  simply 
that  in  leaping  out  of  the  way  he  turned  his  ankle. 
There  was  a  twinge  of  pain,  but  Jurgis  was  used  to  pain, 
and  did  not  coddle  himself.  When  he  came  to  walk 
home,  however,  he  realized  that  it  was  hurting  him  a  great 
deal ;  and  in  the  morning  his  ankle  was  swollen  out 
nearly  double  its  size,  and  he  could  not  get  his  foot  into 
his  shoe.  StiU,  even  then,  he  did  nothing  more  than 
swear  a  little,  and  wrapped  his  foot  in  old  rags,  and  hob¬ 
bled  out  to  take  the  car.  It  chanced  to  be  a  rush  day  at 
Durham’s,  and  all  the  long  morning  he  limped  about  with 
his  aching  foot ;  by  noon- time  the  pain  was  so  great  that 
it  made  him  faint,  and  after  a  couple  of  hours  in  the  after¬ 
noon  he  was  fairly  beaten,  and  had  to  tell  the  boss. 
They  sent  for  the  company  doctor,  and  he  examined  the 
toot  and  told  Jurgis  to  go  home  to  bed,  adding  that  he 


THE  JUNGLE 


.13^- 

had  probably  laid  himself  up  for  months  by  his  folly. 
The  injury  was  not  one  that  Durham  and  Company  could 
be  held  responsible  for,  and  so  that  was  all  there  was  tc 
it,  so  far  as  the  doctor  was  concerned. 

Jurgis  got  home  somehow,  scarcely  able  to  see  for  the 
pain,  and  with  an  awful  terror  in  his  soul.  Elzbieta 
helped  him  into  bed  and  bandaged  his  injured  foot  with 
cold  water,  and  tried  ha^'d  not  to  let  him  see  her  dismay  ; 
when  the  rest  came  home  at  night  she  met  them  outside 
and  told  them,  and  they,  too,  put  on  a  cheerful  face,  say¬ 
ing  it  would  only  bo  for  a  week  or  two,  and  that  they 
would  pull  him  through. 

When  they  had  gotten  him  to  sleep,  how'ever,  they  sat 
by  the  kitchen  fire  and  talked  it  over  in  frightened  whis- 
pers.  They  were  in  for  a  siege,  that  was  plainly  to  be 
seen.  Jurgis  had  only  about  sixty  dollars  in  the  bank, 
and  the  slack  season  was  upon  them.  I3oth  Jonas  and 
Marija  might  soon  be  earning  no  more  than  enough  to 
pay  their  board,  and  besides  that  there  were  only  the 
wages  of  Ona  and  the  pittance  of  the  little  boy.  There 
was  the  rent  to  pay,  and  still  some  on  the  furniture  ;  then 
was  the  insurance  just  due,  and  every  month  there  w'as 
sack  after  sack  of  coal.  It  was  January,  midwinter,  an 
awful  time  to  have  to  face  privation.  Deep  snows  would 
come  again,  and  who  would  carry  Ona  to  her  work  now  ? 
She  might  lose  her  place  —  she  was  almost  certain  to  lose 
it.  And  then  little  Stanislovas  began  to  whimper  —  who 
would  take  care  of  him  ? 

It  was  dreadful  that  an  accident  of  this  sort,  that  no 
man  can  help,  should  have  meant  such  suffering.  The 
bitterness  of  it  was  the  daily  food  and  drink  of  Jurgis. 
It  was  of  no  use  for  them  to  try  to  deceive  him ;  be 
knew  as  much  about  the  situation  as  they  did,  and  he 
knew  that  the  family  might  literally  starve  to  death. 
The  worry  of  it  fairly  ate  him  up  —  he  began  to  lock  hag¬ 
gard  the  first  two  or  three  days  of  it.  In  truth,  it  was 
almost  maddening  for  a  strong  man  like  him,  a  fighter,  to 
have  to  lie  there  helpless  on  his  back.  It  was  for  ail  the 
world  the  old  story  of  Prometheus  bound.  As  Jurgis  lay 


10 


158 


THE  JUNGLE 


on  his  bed,  hour  after  hour,  there  came  to  him  emotions 
that  he  had  never  known  before.  Before  this  he  had  met 
life  with  a  welcome  —  it  had  its  trials,  but  none  that  a 
man  could  not  face.  But  now,  in  the  night-time,  when 
he  lay  tossing  about,  there  would  come  stalking  into  his 
chamber  a  grisly  phantom,  the  sight  of  which  made  his 
flesh  to  curl  and  his  hair  to  bristle  up.  It  was  like  seeing 
the  world  fall  away  from  underneath  his  feet ;  like  plung¬ 
ing  down  into  a  bottomless  abyss,  into  yawning  caverns  of 
despair.  It  might  be  true,  then,  after  all,  what  others  had 
told  him  about  life,  that  the  best  powers  of  a  man  might  not 
be  equal  to  it  I  It  might  be  true  that,  strive  as  he  would, 
toil  as  he  would,  he  might  fail,  and  go  dovm  and  be 
destroyed  I  The  thought  of  this  was  like  an  icj'  hand  at 
his  heart ;  the  thought  that  here,  in  this  ghastly  home  of 
aU  horror,  he  and  all  those  who  were  dear  to  him  might 
lie  and  perish  of  starvation  and  cold,  and  there  would  be 
no  ear  to  hear  their  cry,  no  hand  to  help  them  I  It  was 
true,  it  was  true,  —  that  here  in  this  huge  city,  with  its 
stores  of  heaped-up  wealth,  human  creatures  might  be 
hunted  down  and  destroyed  by  the  wild-beast  powers  of 
nature,  just  as  truly  as  ever  they  were  in  the  days  of  the 
cave-men  I 

Ona  was  now  making  about  thirty  dollars  a  month,  and 
Stanislovas  about  thirteen.  To  add  to  this  there  was  the 
board  of  Jonas  and  Marija,  about  forty-five  dollars.  De¬ 
ducting  from  this  the  rent,  interest,  and  instalments  on 
the  furniture,  they  had  left  sixty  dollars,  and  deducting 
the  coal,  they  had  fifty.  They  did  without  everything 
that  human  beings  could  do  without;  they  went  in  old 
and  ragged  clothing,  that  left  them  at  the  mercy  of  the 
cold,  and  when  the  children’s  shoes  wore  out,  they  tied 
them  up  with  string.  Half  invalid  as  she  was,  Ona  would 
do  herself  harm  by  walking  in  the  rain  and  cold  when  she 
ought  to  have  ridden  ;  they  bought  literallj'-  nothing  but 
food  —  and  still  they  could  not  keep  alive  on  fifty  dollars 
a  month.  They  might  have  done  it,  if  only  they  could 
have  gotten  pure  food,  and  at  fair  prices ;  or  if  only  they 
had  known  what  to  get  — if  they  had  not  been  so  pitifully 


THE  JUNGLE 


139 


ignorant !  But  they  had  come  to  a  new  country,  where 
everything  was  different,  including  the  food.  They  had 
always  been  accustomed  to  eat  a  great  deal  of  smoked 
sausage,  and  how  could  they  know  that  what  they  bought 
in  America  was  not  the  same  —  that  its  color  was  made 
by  chemicals,  and  its  smoky  flavor  by  more  chemicals, 
and  that  it  was  full  of  “  potato-flour  ”  besides  ?  Potato- 
flour  is  the  waste  of  potato  after  the  starch  and  alcohol 
have  been  extracted  ;  it  has  no  more  food  value  than  so 
much  wood,  and  as  its  use  as  a  food  adulterant  is  a  penal 
offence  in  Europe,  thousands  of  tons  of  it  are  shipped  to 
America  every  year.  It  was  amazing  what  quantities  of 
food  such  as  this  were  needed  every  day,  by  eleven 
hungry  persons.  A  dollar  sixty-five  a  day  was  simply 
not  enough  to  feed  them,  and  there  was  no  use  trying  ; 
and  so  each  week  they  made  an  inroad  upon  the  pitiful 
little  bank-account  that  Ona  had  begun.  Because  the 
account  was  in  her  name,  it  was  possible  for  her  to  keep 
this  a  secret  from  her  husband,  and  to  keep  the  heart¬ 
sickness  of  it  for  her  own. 

It  would  have  been  better  if  Jurgis  had  been  really  ill ; 
if  he  had  not  been  able  to  think.  For  he  had  no  resources 
such  as  most  invalids  have ;  all  he  could  do  was  to  lie 
there  and  toss  about  from  side  to  side.  Now  and  then  he 
v/ould  break  into  cursing,  regardless  of  everything;  and 
now  and  then  his  impatience  would  get  the  better  of  him, 
and  he  would  try  to  get  up,  and  poor  Teta  Elzbieta  v/ould 
have  to  plead  with  him  in  frenzy.  Elzbieta  was  all  alone 
with  him  the  greater  part  of  the  time.  She  would  sit  and 
smooth  his  forehead  by  the  hour,  and  talk  to  him  and  try 
to  make  him  forget.  Sometimes  it  would  be  too  cold  for 
the  children  to  go  to  school,  and  they  would  have  to  play 
in  the  kitchen,  v/here  Jurgis  was,  because  it  was  the  only 
room  that  was  half  warm.  These  were  dreadful  times,  for 
Jurgis  would  get  as  cross  as  any  bear ;  he  was  scarcely  to 
be  blamed,  for  he  had  enough  to  worry  him,  and  it  was 
hard  when  he  was  trying  to  take  a  nap  to  be  kept  awake 
by  noisy  and  peevish  children. 

Klzbieta’s  only  resource  in  those  times  was  little  Antanas 


140 


THE  JUHGUE 


indeed,  it  would  be  bard  to  say  how  they  could  have  gotten 
along  at  all  if  it  had  not  been  for  little  Antanas.  It  was 
the  one  consolation  of  Jurgis’s  long  imprisonment  that 
now  he  had  time  to  look  at  his  baby.  Teta  Elzbieta 
would  put  the  clothes-basket  in  which  the  baby  slept 
alongside  of  his  mattress,  and  Jurgis  would  lie  upon  one 
elbow  and  watch  him  by  the  hour,  imagining  things. 
Then  little  Antanas  would  open  his  eyes  — ■  he  was  begin¬ 
ning  to  take  notice  of  things  now ;  and  he  would  smile  — 
how  he  would  smile  I  So  Jurgis  would  begin  to  forget 
and  be  happy,  because  he  was  in  a  world  where  there  was 
a  thing  so  beautiful  as  the  smile  of  little  Antanas,  and 
because  such  a  world  could  not  but  be  good  at  the  heart 
of  it.  He  looked  more  like  his  father  every  hour,  Elzbieta 
would  say,  and  said  it  many  times  a  day,  because  she  saw 
that  it  pleased  Jurgis ;  the  poor  little  terror-stricken 
woman  was  planning  all  daj'’  and  all  night  to  soothe  the 
prisoned  giant  who  was  intrusted  to  her  care.  Jurgis, 
who  knew  nothing  about  the  age-long  and  everlasting 
hypocrisy  of  woman,  would  take  the  bait  and  grin  with 
delight;  and  then  he  would  hold  his  finger  in  front  of 
little  Antanas’s  eyes,  and  move  it  this  M^ay  and  that,  and 
laugh  with  glee  to  see  the  baby  follow  it.  There  is  no 
pet  quite  so  fascinating  as  a  baby;  he  would  look  into 
Jurgis’s  face  with  such  uncanny  seriousness,  and  Jurgis 
would  start  and  cry  ;  ^'•Palaukt  Look,  Muma,  he  knows 
his  papa  I  He  does,  he  does  I  Tv,  mano  szirdele^  the  little 
ras(^  I  ” 


CHAPTER  XII 


For  three  weeks  after  his  injury  Jurgis  never  got  up 
from  bed.  It  was  a  very  obstinate  sprain ;  the  swelling 
would  not  go  down,  and  the  pain  still  continued.  At  the 
end  of  that  time,  however,  he  could  contain  himself  no 
longer,  and  began  trying  to  walk  a  little  every  day,  labor¬ 
ing  to  persuade  himself  that  he  was  better.  No  arguments 
could  stop  him,  and  three  or  four  days  later  he  declared 
that  he  was  going  back  to  work.  He  limped  to  the  cars 
and  got  to  Brown’s,  where  he  found  that  the  boss  had  kept 
his  place  —  that  is,  was  willing  to  turn  out  into  the  snow 
the  poor  devil  he  had  hired  in  the  meantime.  Every  now 
and  then  the  pain  would  force  J  urgis  to  stop  work,  but  he 
stuck  it  out  till  nearly  an  hour  before  closing.  Then  he 
was  forced  to  acknowledge  that  he  could  not  go  on  with¬ 
out  fainting  ;  it  almost  broke  his  heart  to  do  it,  and  he 
stood  leaning  against  a  pillar  and  weeping  like  a  child. 
Two  of  the  men  had  to  help  him  to  the  car,  and  when  he 
got  out  he  had  to  sit  down  and  wait  in  the  snow  till  some 
one  came  along. 

So  they  put  him  to  bed  again,  and  sent  for  the  doctor,  as 
they  ought  to  have  done  in  the  beginning.  It  transpired 
that  he  had  twisted  a  tendon  out  of  place,  and  could  never 
have  gotten  well  without  attention.  Then  he  gripped  the 
sides  of  the  bed,  and  shut  his  teeth  together,  and  turned 
white  with  agony,  while  the  doctor  pulled  and  wrenched 
away  at  his  swollen  ankle.  When  finally  the  doctor  left, 
he  told  him  that  he  would  ha  ve  to  lie  quiet  for  two  months, 
and  that  if  he  went  to  work  before  that  time  he  might  lame 
himself  for  life. 

Three  days  later  there  came  another  heavy  snow-storm, 
and  .Jonas  and  Marija  and  Ona  and  little  Stanislovas  all  set 

141 


142 


THE  JUJ^GLE 


out  together,  an  hour  before  daybreak,  to  try  to  get  to  the 
5'’ards.  About  noon  the  last  two  came  back,  the  boy  scream¬ 
ing  with  pain.  His  fingers  were  all  frosted,  it  seemed. 
They  had  had  to  give  up  trying  to  get  to  the  yards,  and 
had  nearly  perished  in  a  drift.  All  that  they  knew  how 
to  do  was  to  hold  the  frozen  fingers  near  the  fire,  and 
so  little  St'anislovas  spent  most  of  the  day  dancing  about 
in  horrible  agony,  till  Jurgis  flew  into  a  passion  of  nervous 
rage  and  swore  like  a  madman,  declaring  that  he  would 
kill  him  if  he  did  not  stop.  All  that  day  and  night  the 
family  was  half-crazed  with  fear  that  Ona  and  the  boy  had 
lost  their  places  ;  and  in  the  morning  they  set  out  earlier 
than  ever,  after  the  little  fellow  had  been  beaten  with  a 
stick  by  Jurgis.  There  could  be  no  trifling  in  a  case  like 
this,  it  was  a  matter  of  life  and  death;  little  Stanislovas 
could  not  be  expected  to  realise  that  he  might  a  great  deal 
better  freeze  in  the  snow-drift  than  lose  his  job  at  the  lard- 
machine.  Ona  was  quite  certain  that  she  would  find  her 
place  gone,  and  was  all  unnerved  when  she  finally  got  to 
Brown’s,  and  found  that  the  forelady  herself  had  failed  to 
come,  and  was  therefore  compelled  to  be  lenient. 

One  of  the  consequences  of  this  episode  was  that  the 
first  joints  of  three  of  the  little  boy’s  fingers  were  perma¬ 
nently  disabled,  and  another  that  thereafter  he  always  had 
to  be  beaten  before  he  set  out  to  work,  whenever  there 
was  fresh  snow  on  the  ground.  Jurgis  was  called  upon  to 
do  the  beating,  and  as  it  hurt  his  foot  he  did  it  with  a 
vengeance  ;  but  it  did  not  tend  to  add  to  the  sweetness  of 
his  temper.  They  say  that  the  best  dog  will  turn  cross 
if  he  be  kept  chained  all  the  time,  and  it  was  the  same 
with  the  man ;  he  had  not  a  thing  to  do  all  day  but  lie  and 
curse  his  fate,  and  the  time  came  when  he  wanted  to  curse 
everything. 

This  was  never  for  very  long,  however,  for  when  Ona 
began  to  cry,  Jurgis  could  not  stay  angry.  The  poor  fel¬ 
low  looked  like  a  homeless  ghost,  with  his  cheeks  sunken 
in  and  his  long  black  hair  straggling  into  his  eyes ;  he  was 
too  discouraged  to  cut  it,  or  to  think  about  his  appearance. 
His  muscles  were  wasting  away,  and  what  were  left  were 


THE  JtTNGHE 


143 


soft  and  flabby.  He  bad  no  appetite,  and  they  could  not 
afford  to  tempt  him  with  delicacies.  It  was  better,  he  said, 
that  he  should  not  eat,  it  was  a  saving.  About  the  end  of 
March  he  had  got  hold  of  Ona’s  bank-book,  and  learned 
that  there  was  only  three  dollars  left  to  them  in  the 
world. 

But  perhaps  the  worst  of  the  consequences  of  this  long 
siege  was  that  they  lost  another  member  of  their  family ; 
Brother  Jonas  disappeared.  One  Saturday  night  he  did 
not  come  home,  arid  thereafter  all  their  efforts  to  get  trace 
of  him  were  futile.  It  was  said  by  the  boss  at  Durham’s 
that  he  had  gotten  his  week’s  money  and  left  there.  That 
might  not  be  true,  of  course,  for  sometimes  they  would  say 
that  when  a  man  had  been  killed ;  it  was  the  easiest  way 
out  of  it  for  all  concerned.  When,  for  instance,  a  man  had 
fallen  into  one  of  the  rendering  tanks  and  had  been  made 
into  pure  leaf  lard  and  peerless  fertilizer,  there  was  no  use 
letting  the  fact  out  and  making  his  family  unhappy. 
More  probable,  however,  was  the  theory  that  Jonas  had 
deserted  them,  and  gone  on  the  road,  seeking  happiness. 
He  had  been  discontented  for  a  long  time,  and  not  with¬ 
out  some  cause.  He  paid  good  board,  and  was  yet  obliged 
to  live  in  a  family  where  nobody  had  enough  to  eat.  And 
Marija  would  keep  giving  them  all  her  money,  and  of 
course  he  could  not  but  feel  that  he  was  called  upon  to  do 
the  same.  Then  there  were  crying  brats,  and  all  sorts  of 
misery  ;  a  man  would  have  had  to  be  a  good  deal  of  a  hero 
to  stand  it  all  without  grumbling,  and  Jonas  was  not  in 
the  least  a  hero  —  he  was  simply  a  weather-beaten  old 
fellow  who  liked  to  have  a  good  supper  and  sit  in  the 
corner  by  the  fire  and  smoke  his  pipe  in  peace  before  he 
went  to  bed.  Here  there  was  not  room  by  the  fire,  and 
through  the  winter  the  kitchen  had  seldom  been  warm 
enough  for  comfort.  So,  v/ith  the  springtime,  what  was 
more  likely  than  that  the  wild  idea  of  escaping  had  come 
to  him  ?  Two  years  he  had  been  yoked  like  a  horse  to  a 
half-ton  truck  in  Durham’s  dark  cellars,  with  never  a  rest, 
save  on  Sundays  and  four  holidays  in  the  year,  and  \^th 
never  a  word  of  thanks  — ■  only  kicks  and  blows  and  curses. 


144 


THE  JTJNGlJfi 


such  as  no  decent  dog’  would  have  stood.  And  now  the 
winter  was  over,  and  the  spring  winds  were  blowing  — 
and  with  a  day’s  walk  a  man  might  put  the  smoke  of  Pack- 
ingtown  behind  him  forever,  and  be  where  the  grass  was 
green  and  the  flowers  all  the  colors  of  the  rainbow  1 

But  now  the  income  of  the  family  was  cut  down  more 
than  one-third,  and  the  food-demand  was  cut  only  one« 
eleventh,  so  that  they  were  worse  off  than  ever.  Also 
they  were  borrowing  money  from  Marija,  and  eating  up 
her  bank-account,  and  spoiling  once  again  her  hopes  of 
marriage  and  happiness.  And  they  were  even  going  into 
debt  to  Tamoszius  Kuszleika  and  letting  him  impoverish 
himself.  Poor  Tamoszius  was  a  man  without  any  rela¬ 
tives,  and  with  a  wonderful  talent  besides,  and  he  ought 
to  have  made  money  and  prospered  ;  but  he  had  fallen  in 
love,  and  so  given  hostages  to  fortune,  and  was  doomed 
to  be  dragged  down  too. 

So  it  was  finally  decided  that  two  more  of  the  children 
would  have  to  leave  school.  Next  to  Stanislovas,  whc 
■was  now  fifteen,  there  was  a  girl,  little  Kotrina,  who  was 
two  years  younger,  and  then  two  boys,  Vilimas,  who  was 
eleven,  and  Nikalojus,  who  was  ten.  Both  of  these  last 
were  bright  boys,  and  there  was  no  reason  why  their  family 
should  starve  when  tens  of  thousands  of  children  no  older 
were  earning  their  owni  livings.  So  one  morning  they 
were  given  a  quarter  apiec-e  and  a  roll  with  a  sausage  in  it. 
and,  with  their  minds  top-heavy  with  good  advice,  w'^ere 
sent  out  to  make  their  way  to  the  city  and  learn  to  sell 
newspapers.  They  came  back  late  at  night  in  cears,  hav¬ 
ing  walked  the  five  or  six  miles  to  report  that  a  man  had 
offered  to  take  them  to  a  place  where  they  sold  newspapers, 
and  had  taken  their  money  and  gone  into  a  store  to  get 
them,  and  nevermore  been  seen.  So  they  both  received  a 
whipping,  and  the  next  morning  set  out  again.  This 
time  they  found  the  newspaper  place,  and  procured  their 
stock ;  and  after  wandering  about  till  nearly  noontime, 
saying  ‘''Paper?”  to  every  one  they  saw,  they  had  all 
their  stock  taken  away  and  received  a  thrashing  besides 
from  a  big  newsman  upon  whose  territory  they  bad  tres- 


THE  JUNGLE 


148 


passed.  Fortunately,  however,  they  had  already  sold 
some  papers,  and  came  back  with  nearly  as  much  as  they 
started  with. 

After  a  week  of  mishaps  such  as  these,  the  two  little 
fellov/s  began  to  learn  the  ways  of  the  trade,  — the  names 
of  the  different  papers,  and  how  many  of  each  to  get,  and 
what  sort  of  people  to  offer  them  to,  and  where  to  go  and 
where  to  stay  away  from.  After  this,  leaving  home  at 
four  o’clock  in  the  morning,  and  running  about  the  streets, 
first  with  morning  papers  and  then  with  evening,  they 
might  come  home  late  at  night  with  twenty  or  thirty  cents 
apiece  —  possibly  as  much  as  forty  cents.  From  this  they 
had  to  deduct  their  car-fare,  since  the  distance  was  so 
great ;  but  after  a  while  they  made  friends,  and  learned 
still  more,  and  then  they'  would  save  their  car-fare.  They 
would  get  bn  a  car  when  the  conductor  was  not  looking, 
and  hide  in  the  crowd ;  and  three  times  out  of  four  he 
would  not  ask  for  their  fares,  eitlier  not  seeing  them,  or 
thinking  they  had  already  paid  ;  or  if  he  did  ask,  they 
would  hunt  through  their  pockets,  and  then  begin  to  cry, 
and  either  have  their  fares  paid  by  some  kind  old  lady,  or 
else  try  the  trick  again  on  a  new  car.  All  this  was  fair 
play,  they  felt.  Whose  fault  was  it  that  at  the  hours 
when  workingmen  were  going  to  their  work  and  back,  tbe 
cars  were  so  crowded  that  the  conductors  could  not  collect 
all  the  fares  ?  And  besides,  the  companies  were  thieves, 
people  said — had  stolen  all  their  franchises  with  the  help 
of  scoundrelly  politicians  I 

Now  that  the  winter  was  by,  and  there  was  no  more 
danger  of  snow,  and  no  more  coal  to  buy,  and  another 
room  warm  enough  to  put  the  children  into  when  they 
cried,  and  enough  money  to  get  along  from  week  to  week 
with,  Jurgis  was  less  terrible  than  he  had  been.  A  man 
can  get  used  to  anything  in  the  course  of  time,  and  Jurgis 
had  gotten  used  to  lying  about  the  house.  Ona  saw  this, 
and  was  very  careful  not  to  destroy  his  peace  of  mind,  by 
letting  him  know  how  very'  much  pain  she  was  suffering, 
it  was  now  the  time  of  the  spring  rains,  and  Ona  had 


146 


THE  JUNGLE 


often  to  ride  to  her  work,  in  spite  of  the  expense  ;  she  was 
getting  paler  every  day,  and  sometimes,  in  spite  of  her 
good  resolutions,  it  pained  her  that  Jurgis  did  not  notice 
it.  She  wondered  if  he  cared  for  her  as  much  as  ever,  if 
all  this  misery  was  not  wearing  out  his  love.  She  had 
to  be  away  from  him  all  the  time,  and  bear  her  own 
troubles  while  he  was  bearing  his  ;  and  then,  when  she 
came  home,  she  was  so  worn  out  ;  and  whenever  they 
talked  they  had  only  their  worries  to  talk  of  —  truly  it 
was  hard,  in  such  a  life,  to  keep  any  sentiment  alive.  The 
woe  of  this  would  flame  up  in  Ona  sometimes  —  at  night 
she  would  suddenly  clasp  her  big  husband  in  her  arms  and 
break  into  passionate  weeping,  demanding  to  know  if  he 
really  loved  her.  Poor  Jurgis,  who  had  in  truth  grown 
more  matter-of-fact,  under  the  endless  pressure  of  penury, 
would  not  know  what  to  make  of  these  things,  and  could 
only  try  to  recollect  when  he  had  last  been  cross  ;  and  so 
Ona  would  have  to  forgive  him  and  sob  herself  to  sleep. 

The  latter  part  of  April  Jurgis  went  to  see  the  doctor, 
and  was  given  a  bandage  to  lace  about  his  ankle,  and  told 
that  he  might  go  back  to  work.  It  needed  more  than  the 
permission  of  the  doctoi’,  however,  for  when  he  showed  up 
on  the  killing-floor  of  Brown’s,  he  was  told  by  the  foreman 
that  it  had  not  been  possible  to  keep  his  job  for  him. 
Jurgis  knew  that  this  meant  simply  that  the  foreman  had 
found  some  one  else  to  do  the  work  as  well  and  did  not  want 
to  bother  to  make  a  change.  He  stood  in  the  doorway, 
looking  mournfully  on,  seeing  his  friends  and  companions 
at  work,  and  feeling  like  an  outcast.  Then  he  went  out 
and  took  his  place  with  the  mob  of  the  unemployed. 

This  time,  however,  Jurgis  did  not  have  the  same  fine  con* 
fidence,  nor  the  same  reason  for  it.  He  was  no  longer  the 
finest-looking  man  in  the  throng,  and  the  bosses  no  longer 
made  for  him;  he  was  thin  and  haggard,  and  his  clothes 
were  seedy,  and  he  looked  miserable.  And  there  were 
hundreds  who  looked  and  felt  just  like  him,  and  who  had 
been  wandering  about  Packingtown  for  months  begging 
for  work.  This  was  a  critical  time  in  Jurgis’s  life,  and  if 
he  bad  been  a  weaker  man  he  would  have  gone  the  way 


THE  JUNGLE 


147 


the  rest  did.  Those  out-of-work  wretches  would  stand 
about  the  packing-houses  every  morning  till  the  police 
drove  them  iiway,  and  then  they  would  scatter  among  the 
saloons.  Very  few  of  them  had  the  nerve  to  face  the  re¬ 
buffs  that  they  would  encounter  by  trying  to  get  into  tne 
buildings  to  interview  the  bosses;  if  they  did  not  get  a 
chance  in  the  morning,  there  would  be  nothing  to  do  but 
hang  about  the  saloons  the  rest  of  the  day  and  night. 
Jurgis  was  saved  from  all  this — partly,  to  be  sure,  be¬ 
cause  it  was  pleasant  weather,  and  there  was  no  need  to  be 
indoors  ;  but  mainlj'’  because  he  carried  with  him  always 
the  pitiful  little  face  of  his  wife.  He  must  get  work,  he 
told  himself,  fighting  the  battle  with  despair  every  hour  of 
the  day.  He  must  get  work  I  He  must  have  a  place 
again  and  some  money  saved  up,  before  the  next  winter 
came. 

But  there  was  no  work  for  him.  He  sought  out  all  the 
members  of  his  union  —  Jurgis  liad  stuck  to  the  union 
through  all  this  —  and  begged  them  to  speak  a  word  for 
him.  He  went  to  every  one  he  knew,  asking  for  a  chance, 
there  or  anywhere.  He  wandered  all  day  through  tlie 
buildings;  and  in  a  week  or  two,  when  he  had  been  all 
over  the  yards,  and  into  every  room  to  which  he  had 
access,  and  learned  that  there  was  not  a  job  anywhere,  he 
persuaded  himself  that  there  might  have  been  a  change 
in  the  places  he  had  first  visited,  and  began  the  round  all 
over;  till  finally  the  watchmen  and  the  “spotters”  of  the 
companies  came  to  know  him  by  sight  and  to  order  him 
out  with  threats.  Then  there  was  nothing  more  for  him 
to  do  but  go  with  the  crowd  in  the  morning,  and  keep 
in  the  front  row  and  look  eager,  and  when  he  failed,  go 
back  home,  and  play  with  little  Kotrina  and  the  baby. 

The  peculiar  bitterness  of  all  this  was  that  Jurgis  saw 
so  plainly  the  meaning  of  it.  In  the  beginning  he  had 
been  fresh  and  strong,  and  he  had  gotten  a  job  the  first 
day;  but  now  he  was  second-hand,  a  damaged  article,  so  to 
speak,  and  they  did  not  want  him.  They  had  got  the  be'jt 
out  of  him,  —  they  had  worn  him  out,  with  their  speeding- 
up  and  their  carelessness,  and  now  they  had  thrown  him 


148 


TMJii  JUJNULJfi 


awayl  And  Jurgis  would  make  the  acquaintance  of  others 
of  these  unemployed  men  and  find  that  they  had  all  had 
the  same  experience.  There  were  some,  of  course,  who 
had  wandered  in  from  other  places,  who  had  been  ground 
up  in  other  mills  ;  there  were  others  who  were  out  from 
their  own  fault  —  some,  for  instance,  who  had  not  been 
able  to  stand  the  awful  grind  without  drink.  The  vast 
majority,  however,  were  simply  the  worn-out  parts  of  the 
great  merciless  packing-machine;  they  had  toiled  there, 
and  kept  up  with  the  pace,  some  of  them  for  ten  or  twenty 
years,  until  finally  the  time  had  come  when  they  could  not 
keep  up  with  it  any  more.  Some  had  been  frankly  told 
that  they  were  too  old,  that  a  sprier  man  was  needed; 
others  had  given  occasion,  by  some  act  of  carelessness  or 
incompetence  ;  with  most,  however,  the  occasion  had  been 
the  same  as  with  Jurgis.  They  had  been  over  worked  and 
underfed  so  long,  and  finally  some  disease  had  laid  them  on 
their  backs;  or  they  had  cut  themselves,  and  had  blood- 
poisoning,  or  met  with  some  other  accident.  When  a  man 
came  back  after  that,  he  would  get  his  place  back  only  by 
the  courtesy  of  the  boss.  To  this  there  was  no  exception, 
save  when  the  accident  was  one  for  which  the  firm  was 
liable;  in  that  case  they  would  send  a  slippery  lawyer  to 
see  him,  first  to  try  to  get  him  to  sign  away  his  claims,  but 
if  he  was  too  smart  for  that,  to  promise  him  that  he  and 
his  should  always  be  provided  with  work.  This  promise 
they  would  keep,  strictly  and  to  the  letter — -for  two  years. 
Two  years  was  the  “statute  of  limitations,”  and  after  that 
the  victim  could  not  sue. 

What  happened  to  a  man  after  any  of  these  things,  all 
depended  upon  the  circumstances.  If  he  were  of  the  highly 
skilled  workers,  he  would  probably  have  enough  saved  up 
to  tide  him  over.  The  best-paid  men,  the  “  splitters,” 
made  fifty  cents  an  hour,  which  would  be  five  or  six  dollars 
a  day  in  the  rush  seasons,  and  one  or  two  in  the  dullest. 
A  man  could  live  and  save  on  that;  but  then  there  were 
only  half  a  dozen  splitters  in.  each  place,  and  one  of  them 
that  Jurgis  knew  had  a  family  of  twenty- two  children,  all 
hoping  to  grow  up  to  be  splitters  like  their  father.  For 


THE  JUNGLE 


149 


an  nnskilled  man  wlio  made  ten  dollars  a  week  in  the 
rush  seasons  and  five  in  the  dull,  it  all  depended  upon  his 
age  and  the  number  he  had  dependent  upon  him.  An  un¬ 
married  man  could  save,  if  he  did  not  drink,  and  if  he  was 
absolutely  selfish — that  is,  if  he  paid  no  heed  to  the 
demands  of  his  old  parents,  or  of  his  little  brothers  and 
sisters,  or  of  any  other  relatives  he  might  have-,  as  well  as 
of  the  members  of  his  union,  and  bis  chums,  and  the 
people  who  might  be  starving  to  death  next  door. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


During  this  time  that  Jurgis  was  looking  for  work  0C“ 
curred  the  death  of  little  Kristoforas,  one  of  the  children 
of  Teta  Elzbieta.  Both  Kristoforas  and  his  brother, 
Juozapas,  were  cripples,  the  latter  having  lost  one  leg  by 
having  it  run  over,  and  Kristoforas  having  congenital  dis¬ 
location  of  the  hip,  which  made  it  impossible  for  him  ever 
to  walk.  He  was  the  last  of  Teta  Elzbieta’s  children,  and 
perhaps  he  had  been  intended  by  nature  to  let  her  know 
that  she  had  had  enough.  At  any  rate  he  was  wretchedly 
sick  and  undersized ;  he  had  the  rickets,  and  though  he 
was  over  three  years  old,  he  was  no  bigger  than  an  ordi¬ 
nary  child  of  one.  All  day  long  he  would  crawl  around  the 
floor  in  a  filthy  little  dress,  whining  and  fretting :  because 
the  floor  was  full  of  draughts  he  was  always  catching  cold, 
and  snuffling  because  his  nose  ran.  This  made  him  a 
nuisance,  and  a  source  of  endless  trouble  in  the  family. 
For  his  mother,  with  unnatural  perversity,  loved  him  best 
of  all  her  children,  and  made  a  perpetual  fuss  over  him  — 
'Vould  let  him  do  anything  undisturbed,  and  would  burst 
into  tears  when  his  fretting  drove  Jurgis  wild. 

And  now  he  died.  Perhaps  it  was  the  smoked  sausage 
he  had  eaten  that  morning  —  which  may  have  been  made 
out  of  some  of  the  tubercular  pork  that  was  condemned  as 
unfit  for  export.  At  any  rate,  an  hour  after  eating  it,  the 
child  had  begun  to  cry  with  pain,  and  in  another  hour  he 
was  rolling  about  on  the  floor  in  convulsions.  Little 
Kotrina,  who  was  all  alone  with  him,  ran  out  screaming 
for  help,  and  after  a  while  a  doctor  came,  but  not  until 
Kristoforas  had  howled  his  last  howl.  No  one  was  really 
sorry  about  this  except  poor  Elzbieta,  who  was  inconsol¬ 
able.  Jurgis  announced  that  so  far  as  he  was  concerned 

160 


THE  JUNGLE 


151 


the  child  would  have  to  be  buried  by  the  city,  since  they 
had  no  money  for  a  funeral ;  and  at  this  the  poor  woman 
almost  went  out  of  her  senses,  wringing  her  bauds  and 
screaming  with  grief  and  despair.  Her  child  to  be  buried 
in  a  pauper’s  grave  !  And  her  stepdaughter  to  stand  by 
and  hear  it  said  without  protesting  I  It  was  enough  to 
make  Ona’s  father  rise  up  cut  of  his  grave  to  rebuke  her  I 
If  it  had  come  to  this,  they  might  as  well  give  up  at  once, 
and  be  buried  all  of  them  together !  .  .  ,  In  the  end 
Marija  said  that  she  would  help  with  ten  dollars;  and 
Jurgis  being  still  obdurate,  Elzbieta  went  in  tears  and 
begged  the  money  from  the  neighbors,  and  so  little  Kristo- 
foras  had  a  mass  and  a  hearse  with  white  plumes  on  it, 
and  a  tiny  plot  in  a  graveyard  with  a  wooden  cross  to 
mark  the  place.  The  poor  mother  was  not  the  same  for 
months  after  that ;  the  mere  sight  of  the  floor  where  little 
Kristoforas  had  crawled  about  would  make  her  weep. 
He  had  never  had  a  fair  chance,  poor  little  fellow,  she 
would  say.  He  had  been  Iiandicapped  from  his  birth.  If 
only  she  had  heard  about  it  in  time,  so  that  she  might 
have  had  that  great  doctor  to  cure  him  of  his  lameness ! 
.  .  ,  Some  time  ago,  Elzbieta  was  told,  a  Chicago  billion- 
naire  had  paid  a  fortune  to  bring  a  great  European  surgeon 
over  to  cure  his  little  daughter  of  the  same  disease 
from  which  Kristoforas  had  suffered.  And  because  this 
surgeon  had  to  have  bodies  to  demonstrate  upon,  he  an¬ 
nounced  that  he  would  treat  the  children  of  the  poor,  a 
piece  of  magnanimity  over  which  the  papers  became  quite 
eloquent.  Elzbieta,  alas,  did  not  read  the  papers,  and  no 
one  had  told  her  ;  but  perhaps  it  was  as  well,  for  just  then 
they  would  not  have  had  the  car-fare  to  spare  to  go  every 
day  to  wait  upon  the  surgeon,  nor  for  that  matter  any¬ 
body  with  the  time  to  take  the  child. 

All  this  while  that  he  was  seeking  for  work,  there  was  a 
dark  shadow  hanging  over  Jurgis;  as  if  a  savage  beast  were 
lurking  somewhere  in  the  pathway  of  his  life,  and  he  knew 
it,  and  yet  could  not  help  approaching  the  place.  There 
are  all  stages  of  being  out  of  work  in  Packiugtown,  and 


152 


THE  JUNGLE 


he  faced  in  dread  the  prospect  of  reaching"  the  lowest. 
There  is  a  place  that  waits  for  the  lowest  man --the  fer¬ 
tilizer-plant  ! 

The  men  would  talk  about  it  in  awe-stricken  whispers. 
Not  more  than  one  in  ten  had  ever  really  tried  it ;  the 
other  nine  had  contented  themselves  with  hearsay  evi¬ 
dence  and  a  peep  through  the  door.  There  were  some 
things  worse  than  even  starving  to  death.  They  would 
ask  Jurgis  if  he  had  worked  there  3'-et,  and  if  he  meant  to  ; 
and  Jurgis  would  debate  the  matter  with  himself.  As 
poor  as  they  were,  and  making  ail  the  sacrifices  that  they 
were,  would  he  dare  to  refuse  any  sort  of  work  that  was 
offered  to  him,  be  it  as  horrible  as  ever  it  could?  Would 
he  dare  to  go  home  and  eat  bread  that  had  been  earned 
by  Ona,  weak  and  complaining  as  she  was,  knowing  that 
he  had  been  given  a  chance,  and  had  not  had  the  nerve 
to  take  it  ?  — And  yet  he  might  argue  that  way  with  him¬ 
self  all  day,  and  one  glimpse  into  the  fertilizer- works  would 
send  him  away  again  shuddering.  He  was  a  man,  and  he 
would  do  his  duty  ;  he  went  and  made  application  —  but 
surely  he  was  not  also  required  to  hope  for  success  ! 

The  fertilizer-works  of  Durham’s  lay  away  from  the  rest 
of  the  plant.  Few  visitors  ever  saw  them,  and  the  few 
who  did  would  come  out  looking  like  Dante,  of  whom  the 
peasants  declared  that  he  had  been  into  hell.  To  this  part 
of  the  yards  came  all  the  “  tankage,”  and  the  waste  prod¬ 
ucts  of  all  sorts ;  here  they  dried  out  the  bones,  —  and  in 
suffocating  cellars  where  the  daylight  never  came  you 
might  see  men  and  women  and  children  bending  over 
whirling  machines  and  sawing  bits  of  bone  into  all  sorts  of 
shapes,  breathing  their  lungs  full  of  the  fine  dust,  and 
doomed  to  die,  every  one  of  them,  within  a  certain  defi¬ 
nite  time.  Here  they  made  the  blood  into  albumen,  and 
made  other  foul-smelling  things  into  things  still  more 
foul-smelling  In  the  corridors  and  caverns  where  it  was 
done  you  might  lose  yoarself  as  in  the  great  caves  of 
Keutuckyo  In  the  dust  and  the  steam  the  electric  lights 
would  shine  like  far-off  twinkling  stars  — red  and  blue- 
green  and  purple  stars,  according  to  the  color  of  the  mist 


THE  JUI^GLE 


153 


and  the  brew  from  which  it  came.  For  the  odors  in  these 
ghastly  charnel-houses  there  may  be  words  in  Lithuanian, 
but  there  are  none  in  English.  The  person  entering 
would  have  to  summon  his  courage  as  for  a  cold-water 
plunge.  He  would  go  on  like  a  man  swimming  under 
water;  he  would  put  his  handkerchief  over  his  face,  and 
begin  to  cough  and  choke;  and  then,  if  he  were  still  obsti¬ 
nate,  he  would  find  his  head  beginning  to  ring,  and  the 
veins  in  his  forehead  to  throb,  until  finally  he  would  be 
assailed  by  an  overpowering  blast  of  ammonia  fumes, 
and  would  turn  and  run  for  his  life,  and  come  out 
half-dazed. 

On  top  of  this  were  the  rooms  where  they  dried  the 
“  tankage,"’  the  mass  of  brown  stringy  stuff  that  was  left 
after  the  waste  portions  of  the  carcasses  liad  had  the  lard 
and  tallow  tried  out  of  them.  This  dried  material  they 
would  then  grind  to  a  fine  powder,  and  after  they  had 
mixed  it  up  well  with  a  mysterious  but  inoffensive 
brown  rock  which  they  brought  in  and  ground  up  by  the 
hundreds  of  carloads  for  that  purpose,  the  substance  was 
ready  to  be  put  into  bags  and  sent  out  to  the  world  as  any 
one  of  a  hundred  different  brands  of  standard  bone-phos¬ 
phate.  And  then  the  farmer  in  Maine  or  California  or 
Texas  would  buy  this,  at  say  twenty-five  dolla>-s  a  ton, 
and  plant  it  with  his  corn  ;  and  for  several  days  after  the 
operation  the  fields  would  have  a  strong  odor,  and  the 
farmer  and  his  wcgon  and  the  very  horses  that  had 
hauled  it  would  ail  have  it  too.  In  Packingtown  the 
fertilizer  is  pure,  instead  of  being  a  flavoring,  and  instead 
of  a  ton  or  so  spread  out  on  several  acres  under  the  open 
sky,  there  are  hundreds  and  thousands  of  tons  of  it  in  one 
building,  heaped  here  and  there  in  haystack  piles,  cover¬ 
ing  the  floor  several  inches  deep,  and  filling  the  air  with  a 
choking  dust  that  becomes  a  blinding  sand-storm  when  the 
wind  stirs. 

It  was  to  this  building  that  Jurgis  came  daily,  as  if 
dragged  by  an  unseen  hand.  The  month  of  May  was  an 
exceptionally  cool  one,  and  his  secret  prayers  were  granted  • 
but  early  in  June  there  came  a  record-breaking  hot  spelL 
11 


154 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  after  that  there  were  men  wanted  in  the  fertilizer- 
mill. 

The  boss  of  the  grinding  room  had  come  to  know  Jurgis 
by  this  time,  and  had  marked  him  for  a  likely  man ;  and 
so  when  he  came  to  the  door  about  two  o’clock  this  breath¬ 
less  hot  day,  he  felt  a  sudden  spasm  of  pain  shoot  through 
him  —  the  boss  beckoned  to  him  !  In  ten  minutes  more 
Jurgis  had  pulled  off  his  coat  and  overshirt,  and  set  his 
teeth  together  and  gone  to  work.  Here  was  one  more 
diflSculty  for  him  to  meet  and  conquer  I 

His  labor  took  him  about  one  minute  to  learn.  Before 
him  was  one  of  the  vents  of  the  mill  in  which  the  fertilizer 
was  being  ground  —  rushing  forth  in  a  great  brown  river, 
with  a  spray  of  the  finest  dust  flung  forth  in  clouds.  Jurgis 
was  given  a  shovel,  and  along  with  half  a  dozen  others  it 
was  his  task  to  shovel  this  fertilizer  into  carts.  That 
others  were  at  work  he  knew  by  the  sound,  and  by  the 
fact  that  he  sometimes  collided  with  them;  otherwise 
they  might  as  well  not  have  been  there,  for  in  the  blind¬ 
ing  dust-storm  a  man  could  not  see  six  feet  in  front  of  his 
face.  When  he  had  filled  one  cart  he  had  to  grope  around 
him  until  another  came,  and  if  there  was  none  on  hand  he 
continued  to  grope  till  one  arrived.  In  five  minutes  he 
was,  of  course,  a  mass  of  fertilizer  from  head  to  feet ;  they 
gave  him  a  sponge  to  tie  over  his  mouth,  so  that  he  could 
breathe,  but  the  sponge  did  not  prevent  his  lips  and  eye¬ 
lids  from  caking  up  with  it  and  his  ears  from  filling  solid. 
He  looked  like  a  brown  ghost  at  twilight  —  from  hair  to 
shoes  he  became  the  color  of  the  building  and  of  every¬ 
thing  in  it,  and  for  that  matter  a  hundred  yards  outside 
it.  The  building  had  to  be  left  open,  and  when  the 
wind  blew  Durham  and  Company  lost  a  great  deal  of 
fertilizer. 

Working  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  and  with  the  thermometer 
at  over  a  hundred,  the  phosphates  soaked  in  through  every 
pore  of  Jurgis’s  skin,  and  in  five  minutes  he  had  a  head¬ 
ache,  and  in  fifteen  was  almost  dazed.  The  blood  was 
pounding  in  his  brain  like  an  engine’s  tnrobbing ;  there 
was  a  frightful  pain  in  the  top  of  his  skull,  and  he  could 


THE  JUNGLE 


155 


hardly  control  his  hands.  Still,  with  the  memory  of  his 
four  months’  siege  behind  him,  he  fought  on,  in  a  frenzy 
of  determination  ;  and  half  an  hour  later  he  began  to 
vomit  —  he  vomited  until  it  seemed  as  if  his  inwards  must 
be  toi’n  into  shreds.  A  man  could  get  used  to  the  ferti¬ 
lizer-mill,  the  boss  had  said,  if  he  would  only  make  up  his 
mind  to  it;  but  Jurgis  now  began  to  see  that  it  was  a 
question  of  making  up  his  stomach. 

At  the  end  of  that  day  o^  horror,  he  could  scarcely 
stand.  He  had  to  catch  himself  now  and  then,  and  lean 
against  a  building  and  get  his  bearings.  Most  of  the 
men,  when  they  came  out,  made  straight  for  a  saloon  — 
they  seemed  to  place  fertilizer  and  rattlesnake  poison  in 
one  class.  But  Jurgis  was  too  ill  to  think  of  drinking  — 
he  could  only  make  his  way  to  the  street  and  stagger  on  to 
a  car.  He  had  a  sense  of  humor,  and  later  on,  when  ha 
became  an  old  hand,  he  used  to  think  it  fun  to  board  a 
street-car  and  see  what  happened.  Now,  however,  he  was 
too  ill  to  notice  it  —  how  the  people  in  the  car  began  to 
gasp  and  sputter,  to  put  their  handkerchiefs  to  their  noses, 
and  transfix  him  with  furious  glances.  Jurgis  only  knew 
that  a  man  in  front  of  him  immediately  got  up  and  gave 
him  a  seat ;  and  that  half  a  minute  later  the  two  people  on 
each  side  of  him  got  up  ;  and  that  in  a  full  minute  the 
crowded  car  was  nearly  empty  —  those  passengers  who 
could  not  get  room  on  the  platform  having  gotten  out 
to  walk. 

Of  course  Jurgis  had  made  his  home  a  miniature  ferti¬ 
lizer-mill  a  minute  after  entering.  The  stuff  was  half  an 
in(!h  deep  in  his  skin  —  his  whole  system  was  full  of  it, 
and  it  would  have  taken  a  week  not  merely  of  scrubbing, 
but  of  vigorous  exercise,  to  get  it  out  of  him.  As  it  was, 
he  could  be  compared  with  nothing  known  to  men,  save 
that  newest  discovery  of  the  savants,  a  siibstance  which 
emits  energy  for  an  unlimited  time,  without  being  itself 
in  the  least  diminished  in  power.  He  smelt  so  that  he 
made  all  the  food  at  the  table  taste,  and  set  the  whole 
family  to  vomiting  ;  for  himself  it  was  three  days  before 
he  could  keep  anything  upon  his  stomach — he  might 


156 


THE  JUNGLE 


wash  his  hands,  a.nd  use  a  l^uife  and  fork,  but  were  not  his 
mouth  and  throat  filled  with  the  poison  ? 

And  still  J  urgis  stuck  it  out  I  In  spite  of  splitting 
headaches  he  would  stagger  down  to  the  plant  and  take 
up  his  stand  once  more,  and  begin  to  shovel  in  the  blinding 
clouds  of  dust.  And  so  at  the  end  of  the  week  he  was  a 
fertilizer-rnan  for  life  —  he  was  able  to  eat  again,  and 
though  his  head  never  stopped  aching,  it  ceased  to  be  so 
bad  that  he  could  not  work. 

So  there  passed  another  summer.  It  was  a  summer  of 
prosperity,  ail  over  the  country,  and  the  country  ate  gen¬ 
erously  of  packing-house  products,  and  there  was  plenty 
of  work  for  all  the  family,  in  spite  of  the  packers'  efforts 
to  keep  a  superfluity  of  labor.  They  were  again  able  to 
pay  their  debts  and  to  begin  to  save  a  little  sum  ;  but 
there  were  one  or  two  sacrifices  they  considered  too  heavy 
to  be  made  for  long  —  it  was  too  bad  that  the  boys 
should  have  to  sell  papers  at  their  age.  It  was  utterly 
useless  to  caution  them  and  plead  with  them ;  quite  with¬ 
out  knowing  it,  they  were  taking  on  the  tone  of  their  new 
environment.  They  were  learning  to  swear  in  voluble 
English;  they  were  learning  to  pick  up  cigar-stumps  and 
smoke  them,  to  pass  hours  of  their  time  gambling  with 
pennies  and  dice  and  cigarette- cards ;  they  were  learning 
the  location  of  all  the  houses  of  prostitution  on  the 
“Levee,”  and  the  names  of  the  “madames”  who  kept 
them,  and  the  days  when  they  gave  their  state  banquets, 
which  the  police  captains  and  the  big  politicians  all 
attended.  If  a  visiting  “country-customer”  were  to  ask 
them,  they  could  show  him  which  was  “  Hinkydink’s ’* 
famous  saloon,  and  could  even  point  out  to  him  by  name 
the  different  gamblers  and  thugs  and  “hold-up  men”  who 
made  the  place  their  headquarters.  And  wmrse  yet,  the 
boys  were  getting  out  of  the  habit  of  coming  home  at 
night.  What  was  the  use,  they  would  ask,  of  Avasting 
time  and  energy  and  a  possible  car -fare  riding  out  to  the 
stockyards  every  night  when  the  weather  was  pleasant 
and  they  could  crawl  under  a  truck  or  into  an  empty  door 


THE  JUGGLE 


157 


way  and  sleep  exactly  as  well  ?  So  long  as  they  brought 
home  a  half  dollar  for  each  day,  what  mattered  it  wlien 
they  brought  it  ?  But  Jurgis  declared  that  from  this  to 
ceasing  to  come  at  all  would  not  be  a  very  long  step,  and 
so  it  was  decided  that  Vilimas  and  Nikalojus  should 
return  to  school  in  the  fall,  and  that  instead  Elzbieta 
should  go  out  and  get  some  work,  her  place  at  home  being 
taken  by  her  younger  daughter. 

Little  Kotrina  was  like  most  children  of  the  poor,  pre¬ 
maturely  made  old  ;  she  had  to  take  care  of  her  little 
brother,  who  was  a  cripple,  and  also  of  the  baby  ;  she 
had  to  cook  the  meals  and  wash  the  dishes  and  clean 
house,  and  have  supper  ready  when  tlie  workers  came 
home  in  the  evening.  She  was  only  thirteen,  and  small 
for  her  age,  but  she  did  all  this  without  a  murmur ;  and 
her  mother  went  out,  and  after  trudging  a  couple  of  days 
about  the  yards,  settled  down  as  a  servant  of  a.  “  sausage- 
machine.” 

Elzbieta  was  used  to  working,  but  she  found  this  change 
a  hard  one,  for  the  reason  that  she  liad  to  stand  motionless 
upon  her  feet  from  seven  o’clock  in  the  morning  till  half¬ 
past  twelve,  and  again  from  one  till  half-past  five.  For 
the  first  few  days  it  seemed  to  her  tliat  she  could  not  stand 
it  —  she  suffered  almost  as  much  as  Jurgis  had  from  the 
fertilizer,  and  would  come  out  at  sundown  with  her  head 
fairly  reeling.  Besides  this,  she  Avas  working  in  one  of 
the  dark  holes,  by  electric  light,  and  the  dampness,  too, 
was  deadly  —  there  were  always  puddles  of  water  on  the 
floor,  and  a  sickening  odor  of  moist  flesh  in  the  room. 
The  people  who  worked  here  followed  the  ancient  custom 
of  nature,  whereby  the  ptarmigan  is  tlie  color  of  dead 
leaves  in  the  fall  and  of  snow  in  the  winter,  and  the  cha¬ 
meleon,  who  is  black  when  he  lies  upon  a  stump  and  turns 
green  when  he  moves  to  a  leaf.  The  men  and  women  who 
worked  in  this  department  were  precisely  the  color  of  the 
fresh  country  sausage  ”  they  made. 

The  sausage-room  was  an  interesting  place  to  visit,  for 
two  or  three  minutes,  and  provided  that  you  did  not  look 
at  tbe  people ;  the  machines  were  perhaps  the  most  wonder 


158 


THE  JUNGLE 


ful  things  in  the  entire  plant.  Presumably  sausages  were 
once  chopped  and  stuffed  by  hand,  and  if  so  it  would  be 
interesting  to  know  how  many  workers  had  been  displaced 
by  these  inventions.  On  one  side  of  the  room  were  the 
hoppers,  into  which  men  shovelled  loads  of  meat  and 
wheelbarrows  full  of  spices;  in  these  great  bowls  were 
whirling  knives  that  made  two  thousand  revolutions  a 
minute,  and  when  the  meat  was  ground  fine  and  adulter¬ 
ated  with  potato-flour,  and  well  mixed  with  water,  it  was 
forced  to  the  stuffing-machines  on  the  other  side  of  the 
room.  The  latter  were  tended  by  women;  there  was  a 
sort  of  spout,  like  the  nozzle  of  a  hose,  and  one  of  the 
women  would  take  a  long  string  of  “casing”  and  put  the 
end  over  the  nozzle  and  then  work  the  whole  thing  on,  as 
one  works  on  the  finger  of  a  tight  glove.  This  string 
would  be  twenty  or  thirty  feet  long,  but  the  woman 
would  have  it  all  on  in  a  jiffy;  and  when  she  had  several 
on,  she  would  press  a  lever,  and  a  stream  of  sausage-meat 
would  be  shot  out,  taking  the  casing  with  it  as  it  came. 
Thus  one  might  stand  and  see  appear,  miraculously  born 
from  the  machine,  a  wriggling  snake  of  sausage  of  incred¬ 
ible  length.  In  front  was  a  big  pan  which  caught  these 
creatures,  and  two  more  women  who  seized  them  as  fast 
as  they  appeared  and  twisted  them  into  links.  This  was 
for  the  uninitiated  the  most  perplexing  work  of  all;  for 
all  that  the  woman  had  to  give  was  a  single  turn  of  the 
wrist;  and  in  some  way  she  contrived  to  give  it  so  that 
instead  of  an  endless  chain  of  sausages,  one  after  another, 
there  grew  under  her  hands  a  bunch  of  strings,  aU  dan¬ 
gling  from  a  single  centre.  It  was  quite  like  the  feat  of  a 
prestidigitator  —  for  the  woman  worked  so  fast  that  the 
eye  could  literally  not  follow  her,  and  there  was  only  a 
mist  of  motion,  and  tangle  after  tangle  of  sausages  appear¬ 
ing.  In  the  midst  of  the  mist,  however,  the  visitor  would 
suddenly  notice  the  tense  set  face,  with  the  two  wrinkles 
graven  in  the  forehead,  and  the  ghastly  pallor  of  the 
cheeks;  and  then  he  would  suddenly  recollect  that  it 
was  time  he  was  going  on.  The  woman  did  not  go  on; 
she  stayed  right  there  —  hour  after  hour,  day  after  day. 


THE  JUNGLE 


159 


year  after  year,  twisting  sausage-links  and  racing  with 
death.  It  was  piece-work,  and  she  was  apt  to  have  a 
family  to  keep  alive;  and  stern  and  ruthless  economic 
laws  had  arranged  it  that  she  could  only  do  this  by  work¬ 
ing  just  as  she  did,  with  all  her  soul  upon  her  work,  and 
with  never  an  instant  for  a  glance  at  the  well-dressed 
ladies  and  gentlemen  who  came  to  stare  at  her,  as  at  some 
wild  beast  in  a  menagerie. 


CHAPTER  XJY 


With  one  member  trimming  beef  in  a  cannery,  and 
another  working  in  a  sausage  factory,  the  family  had  a 
first-hand  knowledge  of  the  great  majority  of  Packing 
town  swindles.  For  it  was  the  custom,  as  they  found, 
whenever  meat  was  so  spoiled  that  it  could  not  be  used 
for  anjfthing  else,  either  to  can  it  or  else  to  chop  it  up 
into  sausage.  With  what  had  been  told  them  by  Jonas, 
who  had  worked  in  the  pickle-rooms,  they  could  now 
study  the  whole  of  the  spoiled-meat  industry  on  the 
inside,  and  read  a  new  and  grim  meaning  into  that  old 
Packingtown  jest,  —  thajLihey-4nie--©veryhhing--©f--4^ 
except_the  squeaL — 

""T^as  had  told  them  how  the  meat  that  was  taken  out 
of  pickle  would  often  be  found  sour,  and  how  they  would 
rub  it  up  with  soda  to  take  away  the  smell,  and  sell  it  to 
be  eaten  on  free-lunch  counters  ;  also  of  all  the  miracles 
of  chemistry  which  they  performed,  giving  to  any  sort  of 
meat,  fresh  or  salted,  whole  or  chopped,  any  color  and 
any  flavor  and  any  odor  they  chose.  In  the  pickling  of 
hams  they  had  an  ingenious  apparatus,  by  which  they 
saved  time  and  increased  the  capacity  of  the  plant  —  a 
machine  consisting  of  a  hollow  needle  attached  to  a 
pump  ;  by  plunging  this  needle  into  the  meat  and  work¬ 
ing  with  his  foot,  a  man  could  fill  a  ham  with  pickle  in  a 
few  seconds.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  this,  there  would  be 
hams  found  spoiled,  some  of  them  with  an  odcr  so  bad 
that  a  man  could  hardly  bear  to  be  in  the  room  with  them. 
To  pump  into  these  the  packers  had  a  second  and  much 
stronger  pickle  which  destroyed  the  odor  —  a  process 
known  to  the  workers  as  “giving  them  thirty  per  cent.” 
Also,  after  the  hams  had  been  smoked,  there  would  be 

160 


THE 


16i 


found  some  tliat  had  e;one  to  the  bad.  Formerly  these 
had  been  sold  as  “Number  Three  Grade,  but  later  on 
some  ingenious  person  had  hit  upon  a  new  device,  and 
now  they  would  extract  the  bone,  about  which  the  bad 
part  generally  lay,  and  insert  in  the  hole  a  white-hot  iron. 
After  this  invention  there  was  no  longer  Number  One,  Two, 
and  Three  Grade  —  there  was  only  Number  One  Grade. 
The  packers  were  always  originating  such  schemes  —  they 
had  what  they  called  “  boneless  hams,”  which  were  all  the 
odds  and  ends  of  pork  stuffed  into  casings  j  and  “  Cali¬ 
fornia  hams,”  which  were  the  shoulders,  with  big  knuckle- 
joints,  and  nearly  all  the  meat  cut  out ,  and  fancy  “  skinned 
hams,”  which  were  made  of  the  oldest  hogs,  whose  skins 
were  so  heavy  and  coarse  that  no  one  would  buy  them  — 
that  is,  until  they  had  been  cooked  and  chopped  line  and 
labelled  “  head  cheese  ”  1 

It  was  only  wdien  the  whole  ham  was  spoiled  that  it  came 
into  the  department  of  Elzbieta.  Cut  up  by  the  two- 
thousand-revolutions-a-minute  flyers,  and  mixed  with  half 
a  ton  of  other  meat,  no  odor  that  ever  was  in  a  ham  could 
make  any  difference.  There  was  never  the  least  attention 
paid  to  what  was  cut  up  for  sausage  ;  there  would  come 
all  the  way  back  from  Europe  old  sausage  that  bad  been 
rejected,  and  that  was  mouldy  and  white  —  it  would  be 
dosed  with  borax  and  glyeerine,  and  dumped  into  the 
hoppers,  and  made  over  again  fcr  home  consumption. 
There  would  be  meat  that  had  tumbled  out  on  the  floor, 
in  the  dirt  and  sawdust,  where  the  workers  had  tramped 
and  spit  uncounted  billions  of  consumption  genus.  There 
would  be  meat  stored  in  great  piles  in  rooms  ;  and  the 
water  from  leaky  roofs  would  drip  over  it,  and  thousands 
of  rats  would  race  about  on  it.  It  was  too  dark  in  these 
storage  places  to  see  w  ell,  but  a  man  could  run  his  hand 
over  these  piles  of  meat  and  sweep  off  handfuls  of  the 
dried  dung  of  rats.  These  rats  were  nuisances,  and  the 
packers  would  put  poisoned  bread  out  for  them  ;  they 
would  die,  and  then  rats,  bread,  and  meat  would  go  into 
the  hoppers  together.  This  is  no  fairy  story  and  no  joke  , 
the  meat  would  be  shovelled  into  carts,  and  the  man  who 


162 


THE  JUNGLE 


did  the  shovelling  would  not  trouble  to  lift  out  a  rat  even 
when  he  saw  one  —  there  were  things  that  went  into  the 
sausage  in  comparison  with  which  a  poisoned  rat  was  a 
tidbito  There  was  no  place  for  the  men  to  wash  their 
hands  before  they  ate  their  dinner,  and  so  they  made  a 
practice  of  washing  them  in  the  water  that  was  to  be  ladled 
into  the  sausage.  There  were  the  butt-ends  of  smoked 
meat,  and  the  scraps  of  corned  beef,  and  all  the  odds  and 
ends  of  the  waste  of  the  plants,  that  would  be  dumped 
into  old  barrels  in  the  cellar  and  left  there.  Under  the 
system  of  rigid  economy  which  the  packers  enforced, 
there  were  some  jobs  that  it  only  paid  to  do  once  in  a 
long  time,  and  among  these  was  the  cleaning  out  of  the 
waste-barrels.  Every  spring  they  did  it ;  and  in  the 
barrels  would  be  dirt  and  rust  and  old  nails  and  stale 
water  —  and  cart  load  after  cart  load  of  it  would  be  taken 
up  and  dumped  into  the  hoppers  with  fresh  meat,  and  sent 
out  to  the  public’s  breakfast.  Some  of  it  they  would 
make  into  “  smoked  ”  sausage  —  but  as  the  smoking  took 
time,  and  was  therefore  expensive,  they  would  call  upon 
their  chemistry  department,  and  preserve  it  with  borax 
and  color  it  with  gelatine  to  make  it  brown.  All  of  their 
sausage  came  out  of  the  same  bowl,  but  when  they  came 
to  wrap  it  they  would  stamp  some  of  it  “  special,”  and  for 
this  they  would  charge  two  cents  more  a  pound. 

Such  were  the  new  surroundings  in  which  Elzbieta  was 
placed,  and  such  was  the  work  she  was  compelled  to  do. 
It  was  stupefying,  brutalizing  work  ;  it  left  her  no  time 
to  think,  no  strength  for  anything.  She  was  part  of  the 
machine  she  tended,  and  every  faculty  that  was  not 
needed  for  the  machine  was  doomed  to  be  crushed  out  of 
existence.  There  was  only  one  mercy  about  the  cruel 
grind  —  that  it  gave  her  the  gift  of  insensibility.  Little 
by  little  she  sank  into  a  torpor  —  she  fell  silent.  She 
would  meet  Jurgis  and  Ona  in  the  evening,  and  the  three 
would  walk  home  together,  often  without  saying  a  word. 
Ona,  too,  was  falling  into  a  habit  of  silence  —  Ona,  who 
had  once  gone  about  singing  like  a  bird.  She  was  sick 


THE  JUNGLE 


163 


and  miserable,  and  often  she  Vt^ould  barely  have  strength 
enough  to  drag  herself  home.  And  there  they  would  eat 
what  they  had  to  eat,  and  afterwards,  because  there  was 
only  their  misery  to  talk  of,  they  would  crawl  into  bed 
and  fall  into  a  stupor  and  never  stir  until  it  was  time  to 
get  up  again,  and  dress  by  candle-light,  and  go  back  to 
the  machines.  They  were  so  numbed  that  they  did  not 
even  suffer  much  from  hunger,  now ;  only  the  children 
continued  to  fret  when  the  food  ran  short. 

Yet  the  soul  of  Ona  was  not  dead  —  the  souls  of  none 
of  them  were  dead,  but  only  sleeping  ;  and  now  and  then 
they  would  waken,  and  these  were  cruel  times.  The 
gates  of  memory  would  roll  open  —  old  joys  would  stretch 
out  their  arms  to  them,  old  hopes  and  dreams  would  call 
to  them,  and  they  would  stir  beneath  the  burden  that  lay 
upon  them,  and  feel  its  forever  immeasurable  weight. 
They  could  not  even  cry  out  beneath  it ;  but  anguish 
would  seize  them,  more  dreadful  than  the  agony  of  death. 
It  was  a  thing  scarcely  to  be  spoken — a  thing  never  spoken 
by  all  the  world,  that  will  iot  know  its  own  defeat. 

They  were  beaten;  they  bad  lost  the  game,  they  were 
swept  aside.  It  was  not  less  tragic  because  it  was  so 
sordid,  because  that  it  had  to  do  with  wages  and  grocery 
bills  and  rents.  They  had  dreamed  of  freedom  ;  of  a 
chance  to  look  about  them  and  learn  something ;  to  be 
decent  and  clean,  to  see  their  child  grow  up  to  be  strong. 
And  nowit  was  ail  gone  —  it  wmuld  never  be  I  They 
had  played  the  game  and  they  had  lost.  Six  years  more 
of  toil  they  had  to  face  before  they  could  expect  the 
least  respite,  the  cessation  of  the  payments  upon  the 
house  ;  and  how  cruellj'’  certain  it  was  that  they  could 
never  stand  six  years  of  such  a  life  as  they  were  living ! 
They  were  lost,  they  were  going  down  —  and  there  was 
no  deliverance  for  them,  no  hope  ;  for  all  the  help  it  gave 
them  the  vast  city  in  which  they  lived  might  have  been 
an  ocean  waste,  a  wilderness,  a  desert,  a  tomb.  So  often 
this  mood  would  come  to  Ona,  in  the  night-time,  when 
something  wakened  her ;  she  would  lie,  atraid  of  the  beat 
ing  of  her  own  heart,  fronting  the  blocd-red  eyes  of  the 


1G4 


THE  JUNGLE 


old  primeval  terror  of  life.  Once  slie  cried  aloud,  and  -woke 
Jurgis,  who  was  tired  and  cross.  After  that  she  learned  to 
weep  silently — their  moods  so  seldom  came  together  now ! 
It  was  as  if  their  hopes  were  buried  in  separate  graves. 

Jurgis,  being  a  man,  had  troubles  of  his  own.  There 
was  another  spectre  following  him.  He  had  never  spoken 
of  it,  nor  would  he  allow  any  one  else  to  speak  of  it — he 
had  never  acknowledged  its  existence  to  himself.  Yet  the 
battle  with  it  took  all  the  manhood  that  he  had — and  once 
or  twice,  alas,  a  little  more.  Jurgis  had  discovered  drink. 

He  was  working  in  the  steaming  pit  of  hell;  day  after 
day,  week  after  week — until  now  there  was  not  an  organ 
of  his  body  that  did  its  work  without  pain,  until  the  sound 
of  ocean  breakers  echoed  in  his  head  day  and  night,  and 
the  buildings  swayed  and  danced  before  him  as  he  went 
down  the  street.  And  from  all  tire  unending  horror  of 
this  there  was  a  respite,  a  deliverance — he  could  drink ! 
He  could  forget  the  pain,  he  could  slip  off  the  burden  ;  he 
would  see  clearly  again,  he  would  be  master  of  his  brain, 
of  his  thoughts,  of  his  will.  His  dead  self  would  stir  in 
Mm,  and  he  would  find  himself  laughing  and  cracking 
jokes  with  his  companions — he  would  be  a  man  again, 
and  master  of  his  life. 

It  was  not  an  easy  thing  for  Jurgis  to  take  more  than 
two  or  three  drinks.  With  the  first  drink  he  could  eat  a 
meal,  and  he  could  persuade  himself  that  that  was  econ¬ 
omy;  with  the  second  he  could  eat  another  meal — but 
there  would  come  a  time  when  he  could  eat  no  more,  and 
then  to  pay  for  a  drink  was  an  unthinkable  extravagance, 
a  defiance  of  the  age-long  instincts  of  his  hunger-haunted 
class.  One  daj'^,  however,  he  took  the  plunge,  anddrauK 
up  all  that  he  had  in  his  pockets,  and  went  home  half 
“  piped,”  as  the  men  phrase  it.  He  was  happier  than  he 
had  been  in  a  year ;  and  yet,  because  he  knew  that  the 
happiness  would  not  last,  he  was  savage,  too — with  those 
who  would  wreck  it,  and  with  the  world,  and  with  his 
life ;  and  then  again,  beneath  this,  he  was  sick  with  the 
shame  of  himself.  Afterward,  when  he  saw  the  despair  of 
his  family,  and  reckoned  up  the  money  he  had  spent,  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


165 


tears  came  into  his  eyes,  and  he  began  the  long  battle 
with  the  spectre. 

It  was  a  battle  that  had  no  end,  that  never  could  have 
one.  But  Jurgis  did  not  realize  that  very  clearly;  he  was 
not  given  much  time  for  reflection.  He  simply  knew  that 
he  was  always  fighting.  Steeped  in  misery  and  despair 
as  he  was,  merely  to  walk  down  the  street  was  to  be  put 
upon  the  rack.  There  was  surely  a  saloon  on  the  corner — 
perhaps  on  all  four  corners,  and  some  in  the  middle  of  the 
block  as  well;  and  each  one  stretched  out  a  hand  to  him — 
each  one  had  a  personality  of  its  own,  allurementsunlike 
any  other.  Going  and  coming — before  sunrise  and  after 
dark — there  was  warmth  and  a  glow  of  light,  and  the 
steam  of  hot  food,  and  perhaps  music,  or  a  friendly  face, 
and  a  word  of  good  cheer.  Jurgis  developed  a  foudrtess 
for  having  Ona  on  his  arm  whenever  he  went  out  on  the 
street,  and  he  would  hold  her  tightly,  and  walk  fast.  It 
was  pitiful  to  have  Ona  know  of  this — it  drove  him  wild 
to  think  of  it;  the  thing  was  not  fair,  for  Ona  had  never 
tasted  drink,  and  so  could  not  understand.  Sometimes,  in 
desperate  hours,  he  would  find  himself  wishing  that  she 
might  learn  what  it  was,  so  that  he  need  not  be  ashamed 
in  her  presence.  They  might  drink  together,  and  escape 
from  the  horror — escape  for  a  while,  come  what  would. 

So  there  came  a  time  when  nearly  all  the  conscious  life 
of  Jurgis  consisted  of  a  struggle  with  the  craving  for 
liquor.  He  would  have  ugly  moods,  when  he  hated  Ona 
and  the  wdiole  family',  because  they  stood  in  his  way.  He 
was  a  fool  to  have  married;  he  had  tied  himself  down, 
had  made  himself  a  slave.  It  was  all  because  he  was  a 
married  man  that  he  was  compelled  to  stay  in  the  yards; 
if  it  had  not  been  for  that  he  might  have  gone  olf  like 
Jonas,  and  to  hell  with  the  packers.  There  were  few 
single  men  in  the  fertilizer-mill — and  those  few  were 
working  only  for  a  chance  to  escape.  Meantime,  too,  they 
had  something  to  think  about  while  they  worked, — they 
had  the  memory  of  the  last  time  they  had  been  drunk,  and 
the  hope  of  the  time  w'hen  they  would  be  drunk  again.  As 
for  Jurgis,  he  was  expected  to  bring  home  every  penny; 


166 


THE  JUNGLE 


he  could  not  even  go  with  the  men  at  noon-time  — he  was 
supposed  to  sit  down  and  eat  his  dinner  on  a  pile  of  ferti¬ 
lizer  dust. 

This  was  not  always  his  mood,  of  cou  rse ;  he  still  loved 
his  family c,  But  just  now  was  a  time  of  trial.  Poor  little 
Antanas,  for  instance — who  had  never  failed  to  win  him 
with  a  smile- — little  Antanas  was  not  smiling  just  now, 
being  a  mass  of  fiery  red  pimples.  He  had  had  all  the  dis¬ 
eases  that  babies  are  heir  to,  in  quick  succession,  scarlet 
fever,  mumps,  and  whooping-cough  in  the  first  year,  and 
now  he  was  down  with  the  measles.  There  was  no  one 
to  attend  him  but  Kotrina ;  there  was  no  doctor  to  help 
him,  because  they  were  too  poor,  and  children  did  not 
die  of  the  measles — at  least  not  often.  Now  and  then 
Kotrina  would  find  time  to  sob  over  his  woes,  but  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  time  he  had  to  be  left  alone,  barricaded 
upon  the  bed.  The  floor  was  full  of  draughts,  and  if  he 
caught  cold  he  would  die.  At  night  he  was  tied  down, 
lest  he  should  kick  the  covers  off  him,  while  the  family 
lay  in  their  stupor  of  exhaustion.  He  would  lie  and  scream 
for  hours,  almost  in  convulsions;  and  then,  when  he  was 
worn  out,  he  would  lie  whimpering  and  wailing  in  his  tor¬ 
ment.  He  was  burning  up  with  fever,  and  his  eyes  were 
running  sores;  in  the  daytime  he  was  a  thing  uncanny 
and  impish  to  behold,  a  plaster  of  pimples  and  sweat,  a 
great  purple  lump  of  misery. 

Yet  all  this  was  not  really  as  cruel  as  it  sounds,  for,  sick 
as  he  was,  little  Antanas  was  the  least  unfortunate  member 
of  that  family.  He  was  quite  able  to  bear  his  sufferings  — 
it  was  as  if  he  had  all  these  complaints  to  show  what  a 
prodigy  of  health  he  was.  He  was  the  child  of  his  parents’ 
youth  and  joy  ;  he  grew  up  like  the  conjurer’s  rose  bush, 
and  all  the  world  was  his  oyster.  In  general,  he  toddled 
around  the  kitchen  all  day  with  a  lean  and  hungry  look  — 
the  portion  of  the  family’s  allowance  that  fell  to  him  was 
not  enough,  and  he  was  unrestrainable  in  his  demand  for 
more.  Antanas  was  but  little  over  a  year  old,  and  already 
00  one  but  his  father  could  manage  him. 

It  seemed  as  if  he  had  taken  all  of  his  mother’s  strength 


THJi.  JUNGLE 


•  167 


^  had  left  nothing  for  those  that  might  come  after  him. 
Ona  was  with  child  again  now,  and  it  was  a  dreadful  thing 
to  contemplate;  even  Jurgis,  dumb  and  despairing  as  he 
was,  could  not  but  understand  that  yet  other  agonies  were 
on  the  way,  and  shudder  at  the  thought  of  them. 

For  Ona  was  visibly  going  to  pieces.  In  the  first  place 
she  was  developing  a  cough,  like  the  one  that  had  killed 
old  Dede  Antanas.  She  had  had  a  trace  of  it  ever  since  that 
fatal  morning  when  the  greedy  street-car  corporation  had 
turned  her  out  into  the  rain  ;  but  now  it  was  beginning  to 
grow  serious,  and  to  wake  her  up  at  night.  Even  worse 
than  that  was  the  fearful  nervousness  from  which  she  suf¬ 
fered  ;  she  would  have  frightful  headaches  and  fits  of 
aimless  weeping ;  and  sometimes  she  would  come  home  at 
night  shuddering  and  moaning,  and  would  fling  herself 
down  upon  the  bed  and  burst  into  tears.  Several  times 
she  was  quite  beside  herself  and  hysterical;  and  then 
Jurgis  would  go  half  mad  with  fright.  Elzbieta  would 
explain  to  him  that  it  could  not  be  helped,  that  a  woman 
was  subject  to  such  things  when  she  was  pregnant;  but 
he  was  hardly  to  be  persuaded,  and  would  beg  and  plead  to 
know  what  had  happened.  She  had  never  been  like  this 
before,  he  would  argue  —  it  was  monstrous  and  unthink¬ 
able.  It  was  the  lif^e  she  had  to  live,  the  accursed  work 
she  had  to  do,  that  was  killing  her  by  inches.  She  was 
not  fitted  for  it  —  no  woman  was  fitted  for  it,  no 
woman  ought  to  be  allowed  to  do  such  work ;  if  the 
world  could  not  keep  them  alive  any  other  way  it 
ought  to  kill  them  at  once  and  be  done  with  it.  They 
ought  not  to  marry,  to  have  children ;  no  working¬ 
man  ought  to  marry  —  if  he,  Jurgis,  had  known  what  a 
woman  was  like,  he  would  have  had  his  eyes  torn  out  first. 
So  he  would  carry  on,  becoming  half  hysterical  himself, 
which  was  an  unbearable  thing  to  see  in  a  big  man  ;  Ona 
would  pull  herself  together  and  fling  herself  into  his  arms, 
begging  him  to  stop,  to  be  still,  that  she  would  be  better, 
it  would  be  all  right.  So  she  would  lie  and  sob  out  her 
grief  upon  his  shoulder,  while  he  gazed  at  her,  as  helpless 
as  a  wounded  animal,  the  target  of  unseen  enemies. 


CHAPTER  XV 


The  beginning  of  these  peiplexing  things  was  in  the 
summer  ;  and  each  time  Ona  would  promise  him  with 
terror  in  her  voice  that  it  would  not  happen  again  —  but 
in  vain.  Each  crisis  would  leave  Jurgis  more  and  more 
frightened,  more  disposed  to  distrust  Elzbieta’s  consola.- 
tions,  and  to  believe  that  there  was  some  terrible  thing 
about  all  this  that  he  was  not  allowed  to  know.  Once  or 
twice  in  these  outbreaks  he  caught  Ona’s  eye,  and  it 
seemed  to  him  like  the  eye  of  a  hunted  animal;  there 
were  broken  phrases  of  anguish  and  despair  now  and  then, 
amid  her  frantic  weeping.  It  was  only  because  he  was 
so  numb  and  beaten  himself  that  Jurgis  did  not  worry 
more  about  this.  But  he  never  thought  of  it,  except  when 
he  was  dragged  to  it  —  he  lived  like  a  dumb  beast  of  bur¬ 
den,  knowing  only  the  moment  in  which  he  was. 

The  winter  was  coming  on  again,  more  menacing  and 
cruel  than  ever.  It  v/as  October,  and  the  holiday  rush 
had  begun.  It  was  necessary  for  the  packing-machines 
to  grind  till  late  at  night  to  provide  food  that  would  be 
eaten  at  Christmas  breakfasts ;  and  Marija  and  Elzbieta  and 
Ona,  as  part  of  the  machine,  began  working  fifteen  or  six¬ 
teen  hours  a  day.  There  was  no  choice  about  this  — what¬ 
ever  work  there  was  to  be  done  they  had  to  do,  if  they  wished 
to  keep  their  places  ;  besides  that,  it  added  another  pittance 
to  their  inooraes,  so  they  staggered  on  with  the  awful  load. 
They  would  start  v/ork  every  morning  at  seven,  and  eat 
their  dinners  at  noon,  and  then  work  until  ten  or  eleven 
at  night  without  another  mouthful  of  food.  Jurgis  wanted 
to  wait  for  them,  to  help  them  home  at  night,  but  they 
would  not  think  of  this  ;  the  fertilizer-mill  was  not  run¬ 
ning  overtime,  and  there  was  no  place  for  him  to  wait  save 

168 


THE  JUNGLE 


169 


in  a  saloon.  Each  would  stagger  out  into  the  darkness, 
and  make  her  wa,y  to  the  corner,  where  they  met ;  or  if 
the  others  had  already  gone,  would  get  into  a  car,  and 
begin  a  painful  struggle  to  keep  awake.  When  they  got 
home  they  v/ere  always  too  tired  either  to  eat  or  to  undress ; 
they  would  crawl  into  bed  with  their  shoes  on,  and  lie  like 
logs.  If  thej'"  should  fail,  they  would  certainly  be  lost  ; 
if  they  held  out,  they  might  have  enough  coal  for  the 
winter. 

A  day  or  two  before  Thanksgiving  Day  there  came  a 
snow-storm.  It  began  in  the  afternoon,  and  by  evening 
two  inches  had  fallen.  Jurgis  tried  to  wait  for  the  women, 
but  went  into  a  saloon  to  get  warm,  and  took  two  drinks, 
and  came  cut  and  ran  home  to  escape  from  the  demon  ; 
there  he  lay  down  to  wait  for  them,  and  instantly  fell 
asleep.  When  lie  opened  his  eyes  again  he  was  in  the 
midst  of  a  nightmare,  and  found  Elzbieta  shaking  him  and 
crying  out.  At  first  he  could  not  realize  what  she  was 
saying —  Qua  had  not  come  home.  What  time  was  it,  he 
asked.  It  was  morning  —  time  to  be  up.  Ona  had  not 
been  home  that  night  I  And  it  was  bitter  cold,  and  a  foot 
of  snow  on  the  ground. 

Jurgis  sat  up  with  a  start,  Marija  was  crying  with 
fright  and  the  children  were  wailing  in  sympathy  —  little 
Stanislovas  in  addition,  because  the  terror  of  the  snow  was 
upon  him.  Jurgis  had  nothing  to  put  on  but  his  shoes  and 
his  coat,  and  in  half  a  minute  he  was  out  of  the  door. 
Then,  however,  he  realized  that  there  was  no  need  of 
haste,  that  he  had  no  idea  where  to  go.  It  was  still  dark 
as  midnight,  and  the  thick  snowflakes  were  sifting 
down  —  everything  was  so  silent  that  he  could  hear  the 
rustle  of  them  as  they  fell.  In  the  few  seconds  that  he 
stood  there  hesitating  he  was  covered  w'hite. 

He  sec  off  at  a  run  for  the  yards,  stopping  by  the  way 
to  inquire  in  the  saloons  that  were  open.  Ona  might  have 
been  overcome  on  the  way  ;  or  else  she  might  have  met 
wnth  an  accident  in  the  machines.  When  he  got  to  the 
place  whe^'e  she  worked  he  inquired  of  one  of  the  watch¬ 
men  —  there  had  not  been  any  accident,  sc  far  as  the  man 


12 


170 


THE  JUNGLE 


had  heard.  At  the  time-olBce,  which  he  found  already 
open,  the  clerk  told  him  that  Ona’s  check  had  been  turned 
in  the  night  before,  showing  that  she  had  left  her  work. 

After  that  there  was  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  wait, 
pacing  back  and  forth  in  the  snow,  mteantime,  to  keep  from 
freezing.  Already  the  yards  were  full  of  activity  ;  cattle 
were  being  unloaded  from  the  cars  in  the  distance,  and 
across  the  way  the  “beef-luggers”  were  toiling  in  the 
darkness,  carrying  two-hundred-pound  quarters  of  bullocks 
into  the  refrigerator-cars.  Before  the  first  streaks  of  day¬ 
light  there  came  the  crowding  throx..gs  of  workingmen, 
shivering,  and  swinging  their  dinner  pails  as  they  hurried 
by.  Jurgis  took  up  his  stand  by  the  time-office  window, 
where  alone  there  was  light  enougii  for  him  to  see  j  the 
snow  fell  so  thick  that  it  was  only  by  peering  closely  that 
he  could  make  sure  that  Ona  did  not  pass  him. 

Seven  o’clock  came,  the  hour  when  the  great  packing- 
machine  began  to  move.  Jurgis  ought  to  have  been  at 
his  place  in  the  fertilizer-mill ;  but  instead  he  was  waiting, 
in  an  agony  of  fear,  for  Ona.  It  was  fifteen  minutes  after 
the  hour  when  he  saw  a  form  emerge  from  the  snow-mist, 
and  sprang  toward  it  with  a  cry.  It  was  she.  running 
swiftly ;  as  she  saw  him,  she  staggered  forward,  and  half 
fell  into  his  outstretched  arms. 

“  What  has  been  the  matter  ‘f  **  he  cried,  anxiously. 
“  Where  have  you  been  ?  ” 

It  was  several  seconds  before  she  could  get  breath  to 
answer  him.  “I  couldn’t  get  home,”  she  exclaimed,  “The 
snow — -the  cars  had  stopped.” 

“But  where  were  you  then  he  demanded. 

“I  bad  to  go  home  with  a  friend,”  she  panted  —  “with 
Jadvyga.*' 

Jurgis  drew  a  deep  breath  |  but  then  he  noticed  that  she 
was  sobbing  and  trembling  —  as  if  in  one  of  those  nervous 
crises  that  he  dreaded  so.  “  But  wh^’s  the  matter  ?  ”  he 
cried.  “  What  has  happened  ?  ” 

“  Oh,  Jurgis,  I  wms  so  frightened  I  ”  she  said,  clinging 
to  him  wildly.  “  I  have  been  so  worried  I  ” 

They  were  near  the  time-station  window,  and  people 


THE  JUKGLE 


171 


were  staring  at  them.  Jurgis  led  her  away.  **•  How  do 
you  mean  ?  ”  he  asked,  in  perplexity. 

“I  was  afraid  —  1  was  just  afraid  I  **  sobbed  Ona.  “1 
knew  you  wouldn’t  know  where  I  was,  and  I  didn’t  know 
what  you  might  do.  I  tried  to  get  home,  but  I  was  so 
tired.  Oh,  Jurgis,  Jurgis  I  ” 

He  was  so  glad  to  get  her  back  that  he  could  not  think 
clearly  about  anything  else.  It  did  not  seem  strange  to 
him  that  she  should  be  so  very  much  upset ;  all  her  fright 
and  incoherent  protestations  did  not  matter  since  he  had 
her  back.  He  let  her  cry  away  her  fears  ;  and  then,  be¬ 
cause  it  was  nearly  eight  o’clock,  and  they  would  lose 
another  hour  if  they  delayed,  he  left  her  at  the  packing¬ 
house  door,  with  her  ghastly  white  face  and  her  haunted 
eyes  of  terror. 

There  was  another  brief  interval.  Christmas  was  al¬ 
most  come  5  and  because  the  snow  still  held,  and  the 
searching  cold,  morning  after  morning  Jurgis  half  carried 
his  wife  to  her  post,  staggering  with  her  through  the  dark¬ 
ness  ;  until  at  last,  one  night,  came  the  end. 

It  lacked  but  three  days  of  the  holidays.  About  mid¬ 
night  Marija  and  Eizbieta  came  home,  exclaiming  in  alarm 
when  they  found  that  Ona  had  not  come.  The  two  had 
agreed  to  meet  her ;  and,  after  waiting,  had  gone  to  the 
room  where  she  worked,  only  to  find  that  the  ham-wrap¬ 
ping  girls  had  quit  work  an  hour  before,  and  left.  There 
was  no  snow  that  night,  nor  was  it  especially  cold  ;  and 
still  Ona  had  not  come  1  Something  more  serious  must 
be  wrong  this  time. 

They  aroused  Jurgis,  and  he  sat  up  and  listened  crossly 
to  the  story.  She  must  have  gone  home  again  with  Jad- 
vyga,  he  saiJ  ;  Jadvyga.  lived  only  two  blocks  from  the 
yards,  and  perhaps  she  had  been  tired.  Nothing  could 
have  happened  to  her  —  and  even  if  there  had,  there  was 
nothing  could  be  done  about  it  until  morning.  Jurgis 
turned  over  in  his  bed,  and  was  snoring  again  before  the 
two  had  closed  the  door. 

In  the  morning,  however,  he  was  up  and  out  nearly  ar 


172 


THE  JUNGLE 


hour  before  the  usual  time.  Jadvyga  Marcinkus  lived  on 
the  other  side  of  the  yards,  beyond  Halsted  Street,  with 
her  mother  and  sisters,  in  a  single  basement  room  —  for 
Mikolas  had  recently  lost  one  hand  from  blood-poisoning, 
and  their  marriage  had  been  put  off  forever.  The  door  of 
the  room  was  in  the  rear,  reached  by  a  narrow  court,  and 
Jurgis  saw  a  light  in  the  window  and  heard  something 
frying  as  he  passed  ;  he  knocked,  half  expecting  that  Ona 
would  answer. 

Instead  there  was  one  of  Jadvyga^s  little  sisters,  who 
gazed  at  him  through  a  crack  in  the  door.  “  Where's 
Ona  ?  ”  he  demanded  ;  and  the  child  looked  at  him  in 
perplexity.  “  Ona  ?  ”  she  said. 

“Yes,*’  said  Jurgis,  “isn’t  she  here  ?” 

“No,”  said  the  child,  and  Jurgis  gave  a  start.  A  mo¬ 
ment  later  came  Jadvyga,  peering  over  the  child’s  head. 
When  she  saw  who  it  was,  she  slid  around  out  of  sight, 
for  she  was  not  c[uite  dressed.  Jurgis  must  excuse  her, 
she  began,  her  mother  was  very  ill - 

“Ona  isn’t  here?”  Jurgis  demanded,  too  alarmed  to 
wait  for  her  to  finish. 

“  W  hy,  no,”  said  Jadvyga.  “  What  made  you  think 
she  would  be  here  ?  Had  she  said  she  was  coming  ?  ” 

“No,”  he  answered.  “But  she  hasn’t  come  home  — 
and  I  thought  she  would  be  here  the  same  as  before.” 

“  As  before  ?  ”  echoed  Jadvyga,  in  perplexity. 

“I'he  time  she  spent  the  night  here,”  said  Jurgis. 

“  There  must  be  some  mistake,”  she  answered,  quickly. 
“  Ona  has  never  spent  the  night  here.” 

He  was  only  half  able  to  realize  her  words.  “  W'hy — why 
—  ” he  exclaimed.  “Two  weeks  ago,  Jadvyga!  She  told 
me  so — the  night  it  snowed,  and  she  could  not  get  home,” 

“  There  must  be  some  mistake,”  declared  the  girl,  again ; 
“she  didn't  come  here.” 

He  steadied  himself  by  the  door-sill ;  and  Jadvyga  in 
her  anxiety  —  for  she  was  fond  of  Ona  —  opened  the  door 
wide,  holding  her  jacket  across  her  throat.  “Are  you 
Bute  you  didn’t  misunderstand  her?”  she  cried.  “She 
must  have  meant  soinewhere  else.  She  — — ” 


THE  JUNGLE 


173 


“^She  said  here,**  insisted  Jurgis.  ^Sbetoid  me  ali 
about  you,  and  how  you  were,  and  what  you  said.  Are 
you  sure  ?  You  haven’t  forgotten  ?  You  weren't  away?" 

“No,  no  I”  she  exclaimed  —  and  then  came  a  peevish 
voice  —  “  Jadvyga^  you  are  giving  the  baby  a  cold.  Shut 
the  door  I  ”  Jurgis  stood  for  half  a  minute  more,  stam¬ 
mering  his  perplexity  through  an  eighth  of  an  inch  of 
crack  ;  and  then,  as  there  was  really  nothing  more  to  be 
said,  he  excused  himself  and  went  away. 

He  walked  on  half  dazed,  without  knowing  where  he 
went.  Ona  had  deceived  him  I  She  had  lied  to  him  I 
And  what  could  it  mean  —  where  had  she  been?  Where 
was  she  now?  He  could  hardly  grasp  the  thing  —  much 
less  try  to  solve  it ;  but  a  hundred  wild  surmises  came  to 
him,  a  sense  of  impending  calamity  overwhelmed  him. 

Because  there  was  nothing  else  to  do,  he  went  back  to 
the  time-office  to  watch  again.  He  waited  until  nearly  an 
hour  after  seven,  and  then  went  to  the  room  where  Ona 
worked  to  make  inquiries  of  Oua’s  “  forelady.”  The  “  fore¬ 
lady,”  he  found,  had  not  yet  come  ;  all  the  lines  of  cars  that 
came  from  down-town  were  stalled — there  had  been  an  acci¬ 
dent  in  the  power-house,  and  no  cars  had  been  running 
since  last  night.  Meantime,  however,  the  ham-wrappers 
were  working  away,  with  some  one  else  in  charge  of 
them.  The  girl  who  answered  Jurgis  was  busy,  and 
as  she  talked  she  looked  to  see  if  she  were  being  watched. 
Then  a  man  came  up,  wheeling  a  truck;  he  knew  Jurgis 
for  Ona’s  husband,  and  was  curious  about  the  mystery. 

“  Maybe  the  cars  had  something  to  do  with  it,”  he  sug¬ 
gested —  “maybe  she  had  gone  down-town.” 

“No,”  said  Jurgis,  “she  never  went  down-town.” 

“  Perhaps  not,”  said  the  man. 

Jurgis  thought  he  saw  him  exchange  a  swift  glance  with 
the  girl  as  he  spoke,  and  he  demanded  quickly,  “  What  do 
you  know  about  it  ?  ” 

But  the  man  had  seen  that  the  boss  was  watching  him  ? 
he  started  on  again,  pushing  his  truck.  “  I  don’t  know 
anything  about  it,”  he  said,  over  his  shouldbr.  “How 
should  I  know  wWe  your  wife  goes?” 


174 


THE  JUNGLE 


Then  Jurgis  went  out  again,  and  paced  up  and  dowB 
before  the  building.  All  the  morning  he  stayed  there, 
with  no  thought  of  his  work.  About  noon  he  went  to 
the  police  station  to  make  inquiries,  and  then  came  back 
again  for  another  anxious  vigil.  Finally,  toward  the 
middle  of  the  afternoon,  he  set  out  for  home  once  more. 

He  was  v'^alking  out  Ashland  Avenue.  The  street-cars 
had  begun  running  again,  and  several  passed  him,  packed 
to  the  steps  with  people.  The  sight  of  them  set  Jurgis 
to  thinking  again  of  the  man’s  sarcastic  remark ;  and  half 
involuntarily  he  found  himself  watching  the  cars  —  with 
the  result  that  he  gave  a  sudden  startled  exclamation, 
and  stopped  short  in  his  tracks. 

Then  he  broke  into  a  run.  For  a  whole  block  he  tore 
after  the  car,  only  a  little  ways  behind.  That  rusty  black 
hat  with  the  drooping  red  flower,  it  might  not  be  Ona’s, 
but  there  was  very  little  likelihood  of  it.  He  would  know 
for  certain  very  soon,  for  she  would  get  out  two  blocks 
ahead.  He  slowed  down,  and  let  the  car  go  on. 

She  got  out  $  and  as  soon  as  she  was  out  of  sight  on  the 
side  street  Jurgis  broke  into  a  run.  Suspicion  was  rife  in 
him  now,  and  he  was  not  ashamed  to  shadow  her ;  he  saw 
her  turn  the  corner  near  their  home,  and  then  he  ran  again, 
and  saw  her  as  she  went  up  the  porch-steps  of  the  house. 
After  that  he  turned  back,  and  for  five  minutes  paced  up 
and  down,  his  hands  clenched  tightly  and  his  lips  set,  his 
mind  in  a  turmoil.  Then  he  went  home  and  entered. 

As  he  opened  the  door,  he  saw  Elzbieta,  who  had  also 
been  looking  for  Ona,  and  had  come  home  again.  She 
was  now  on  tiptoe,  and  had  a  finger  on  her  lips.  Jurgis 
waited  untU  she  was  close  to  him. 

“  Don't  make  any  noise,”  she  whispered,  hurriedly. 

What’s  the  matter?  ”  he  asked. 

“Ona  is  asleep,”  she  panted.  “She’s  been  very  ilL 
Pm  afraid  her  mind’s  been  wandering,  Jurgis.  She  was 
lost  on  the  street  aU  night,  and  I’ve  only  just  succeeded 
in  getting  her  quiet.” 

“  When  did  she  come  in?”  he  asked. 

“Soon  after  you  left  this  morning,”  said  Elzbieta. 


THE  JtmGLE 


175 


And  has  she  been  ont  since  ?  ** 

“No,  of  course  not.  She’s  so  weak,  Jurgis,  she - ” 

And  he  set  his  teeth  hard  together.  “  You  are  lying  tc 
018,”  he  said. 

Elzbieta  started,  and  turned  pale.  “  Why  I  ’*  she  gasped 
“  What  do  you  mean?  ” 

But  Jurgis  did  not  answer.  He  pushed  her  aside,  and 
strode  to  the  bedroom  door  and  opened  it. 

Ona  was  sitting  on  the  bed.  She  turned  a  startled  look 
upon  him  as  he  entered.  He  closed  the  door  in  Elzbieta’s 
face,  and  went  toward  his  wife.  “  Where  have  you  been?  ” 
he  demanded. 

She  had  her  hands  cla  sped  tightly  in  her  lap,  and  he  saw 
ihat  her  face  was  as  white  as  paper,  and  drawn  with  pain. 
She  gasped  once  or  twice  as  she  tried  to  answer  him,  and 
then  began,  speaking  low,  and  swiftly,  “  Jurgis,  I  —  I  think 
I  have  been  out  cf  my  mind.  I  started  to  come  last  night, 
and  I  could  not  find  the  way.  I  walked  —  I  walked  all 
night,  I  think,  and  —  and  I  only  got  home  —  this  morning.” 

'‘You  needed  a  rest,”  he  said,  in  a  hard  tone.  “Why 
did  you  go  out  again?” 

He  was  looking  her  fairly  in  the  face,  and  he  could  read 
the  sudden  fear  and  wild  uncertainty  that  leaped  into  her 
eyes.  “I  —  I  had  to  go  to  —  to  the  store,”  she  gasped, 
almost  in  a  whisper,  “  I  had  to  go  ■  -  »■  ” 

“  You  are  lying  to  me,”  said  Jurgis. 

Then  he  clenched  his  hands  and  took  a  step  toward  her. 
“Why  do  you  lie  to  me?”  he  cried,  fiercely.  “What  are 
you  doing  that  you  ha»re  to  lie  to  me?” 

“  Jurgis  1  ”  she  exclaimed,  starting  up  in  fright.  “  Oh, 
Jurgis,  how  can  you?” 

“  You  have  lied  to  me,  I  say  I  ”  he  cried.  “  You  told  me 
you  had  been  to  Jadvyga’s  house  that  other  night,  and  you 
hadn’t.  You  had  been  where  you  were  last  night  — some- 
wheres  down-town,  for  I  saw  you  get  off  the  car.  Where 
were  you?” 

It  was  as  if  he  had  struck  a  knife  into  her.  She  seemed 
to  go  all  to  pieces.  For  half  a  second  she  stood,  reeling 
end  swaying,  staring  at  him  with  horror  in  her  eyes ;  then. 


176 


THE  JTOGLE 


with  a  cry  of  angtiishs  she  tottered  forward,  stretching  onii 
her  arms  to  him. 

But  he  stepped  aside,  deliberately,  and  let  her  fall.  She 
caught  herself  at  the  side  of  the  bed,  and  then  sank  down, 
burying  her  face  in  her  hands  and  bursting  into  frantio 
weeping. 

There  came  one  of  those  hysterical  crises  that  had  so 
often  dismayed  him.  Ona  sobbed  and  wept,  her  fear  and 
anguish  building  themselves  up  into  long  climaxes.  Furi¬ 
ous  gusts  of  emotion  would  come  sweeping  over  her,  shak¬ 
ing  her  as  the  tempest  shakes  the  trees  upon  the  hills  ;  all 
her  frame  would  quiver  and  throb  with  them  —  it  was  as 
if  some  dreadful  thing  rose  up  within  her  and  took  pos¬ 
session  of  her,  torturing  her,  tearing  her.  This  thing  had 
been  wont  to  set  Jurgis  quite  beside  himself  ;  but  now 
he  stood  with  his  lips  set  tightly  and  his  hands  clenched 
—  she  might  weep  till  she  killed  herself,  but  she  should 
not  move  him  this  time  —  nor  an  inch,  not  an  inch.  Be¬ 
cause  the  sounds  she  made  set  his  blood  to  running  cold 
and  his  lips  to  quivering  in  spite  of  himself,  he  was  glad 
of  the  diversion  when  Teta  Elzbieta,  pale  'with  fright, 
opened  the  door  and  rushed  in  ;  yet  he  turned  upon  her 
with  an  oath.  “  Go  out  I  ”  he  cried,  “  go  out  1  ’*  And 
then,  as  she  stood  hesitating,  about  to  speak,  he  seized 
her  by  the  a,rm,  and  half  flung  her  from  the  room,  slam¬ 
ming  the  door  and  barring  it  with  a  table.  Then  he 
turned  again  and  faced  Ona,  crying  —  “Now,  answer 
me  1 

Yet  she  did  not  hear  him  —  she  was  still  in  the  grip  of 
the  fiend.  Jurgis  could  see  her  outstretched  hands,  shak¬ 
ing  and  twitching,  roaming  here  and  there  over  the  bed 
at  will,  like  living  things  j  he  could  see  convulsive  shud- 
derings  start  in  her  body  and  run  through  her  limbs. 
She  was  sobbing  and  choking  —  it  was  as  if  there  were 
too  many  sounds  for  one  throat,  they  came  chasing  each 
other,  like  waves  upon  the  sea.  Then  her  voice  would  be¬ 
gin  to  rise  into  screams,  louder  and  loader  until  it  broke 
in  wild,  horrible  peals  of  laughter,  .lurgis  bore  it  until 
he  could  bear  it  no  longer,  and  then  he  sprang  at  her. 


THE  JIGCNGLE 


177 


seizing  her  by  the  shoulders  and  shaking  her,  shouting 
mto  ner  ear  :  “  Stop  it,  I  say  I  Stop  it  1  ■“ 

She  looked  up  at  him,  out  of  her  agony  ;  then  she  fell 
forward  at  his  feet.  She  caught  them  in  her  hands,  in 
spite  of  his  efforts  to  step  aside,  and  with  her  face  upon 
the  floor  lay  writhing..  It  made  a  choking  in  Jurgis^s 
throat  to  hear  her,  and  he  cried  again,  more  savagely  than 
before  :  “  Stop  it,  1  say  1  ” 

This  time  she  heeded  him,  and  caught  her  bx-eath  and 
lay  silent,  save  for  the  gasping  sobs  that  wrenched  all  her 
frame.  For  a  long  minute  she  lay  there,  perfectly  motion¬ 
less,  until  a  coJH  fear  seized  her  husband,  thinking  that 
she  was  dying.  Suddenly,  however,  he  heard  her  voice, 
faintly:  “JurgisI  Jurgis  !  ” 

What  is  it  ?  he  said. 

He  had  to  bend  down  to  her,  she  was  so  weak.  She 
was  pleading  with  him,  in  broken  phrases,  painfully  ut¬ 
tered  :  “  Have  faith  in  me  I  Believe  me  I  ” 

“  Believe  what  ?  ”  he  cried. 

“  Believe  that  I  —  that  I  know  best  —  that  1  love  you  1 
And  do  not  ask  me  — what  you  did.  Oh,  Jurgis,  please, 

please  I  It  is  for  the  best  —  it  is - ” 

He  started  to  speak  again,  but  she  rushed  on  frantically, 
heading  him  off.  “  If  you  will  only  do  it  I  If  you  will 
only  —  only  believe  me  1  It  wasn’t  my  fault  —  I  couldn’t 
help  it  —  it  will  be  all  right  —  it  is  nothmg  —  it  is  no 
harm.  Oh,  Jurgis  —  please,  please  I  ” 

She  had  hold  of  him,  and  was  trying  to  raise  herself  to 
look  at  him  ;  he  could  feel  the  palsied  shaking  of  her 
hands  and  the  heaving  of  the  bosom  she  pressed  against 
him.  She  managed  to  catch  one  of  his  hands  and  gripped 
it  convulsively,  drawing  it  to  her  face,  and  bathing  it  in 
her  tears.  “  Oh,  believe  me,  believe  me  1  ”  she  wailed 
again  ;  and  he  shouted  in  fury,  I  will  not  I  ” 

Bat  still  she  clung  to  him,  wailing  aloud  in  her  despair: 
“Oh,  Jurgis,  think  what  you  are  doing  i  It  will  ruin  us 
—  it  will  ruin  us!  Oh,  no,  you  must  not  do  it  I  No, 
don’t,  don’t  do  it.  Y  ou  must  not  do  it  !  It  will  drive  me 
mad— it  will  kill  me  — no,  no,  Jurgis,  I  am  crazy  — it  is 


178 


THE  JUNGLE 


nothing.  You  do  not  really  need  to  know.  We  can  be 
happy  —  we  can  love  each  other  just  the  same.  Oh, 
please,  please,  believe  me  I  ” 

Her  words  fairly  drove  him  wild.  He  tore  his  hands 
loose,  and  flung  her  off.  “  Answer  me,”  he  cr  ed.  “  God 
damn  it,  I  say  —  answer  me  1  ” 

She  sank  down  upon  the  floor,  beginning  to  cry  again. 
It  was  like  listening  to  the  moan  of  a  damned  soul,  and 
Jurgis  could  not  stand  it.  He  smote  his  fist  upon  the 
table  by  his  side,  and  shouted  again  at  her,  “Answer 
me  I  ” 

She  began  to  scream  aloud,  her  voice  like  the  voice 
of  some  wild  beast ;  “  Ah  I  Ah  I  I  can’t !  I  can’t  do 
it  I” 

“  Why  can’t  you  do  it  ?  ”  he  shouted. 

“  I  don’t  know  how  I  ” 

He  sprang  and  caught  her  by  the  arm,  lifting  her  up, 
and  glaring  into  her  face.  “  Tell  me  where  you  were  last 
night  I  ”  he  panted.  “  Quick,  out  with  it  I  ” 

Then  she  began  to  whisper,  one  word  at  a  time  :  “  I  - — 
was  in  —  a  house  —  down-town - ” 

“  What  house  ?  What  do  you  mean  ?  ” 

She  tried  to  hide  her  eyes  away,  but  he  held  her.  “  Miss 
Henderson’s  house,”  she  gasped. 

He  did  not  understand  at  first.  “Miss  Henderson’s 
house,”  he  echoed.  And  then  suddenly,  as  in  an  explo¬ 
sion,  the  horrible  truth  burst  over  him,  and  he  reeled 
and  staggered  back  with  a  scream.  He  caught  himself 
against  the  wall,  and  put  his  hand  to  his  forehead,  star¬ 
ing  about  him,  and  whispering,  “Jesus  I  Jesus!” 

An  instant  later  he  leaped  at  her,  as  she  lay  grovelling 
at  his  feet.  He  seized  her  by  the  throat.  “  Tell  me  I  ” 
he  gasped,  hoarsely.  “  Quick  I  Who  took  you  to  that 
place  ? ” 

She  tried  to  get  away,  making  him  furious  ;  he  thought 
it  was  fear,  or  the  pain  of  his  clutch  —  he  did  not  under¬ 
stand  that  it  was  the  agony  of  her  shame.  Still  she  an- 
swered  him,  “  Connor.” 

“  Connor,”  he  gasped.  “  Who  is  Connor  ?  ” 


THE  JUNGLE 


179 


'“The  boss,"  she  answered.  “  The  man - - 

He  tightened  his  grip,  in  his  frenzy,  and  only  when  he 
saw  her  eyes  closing  did  he  realize  that  he  was  choking 
her.  Then  he  relaxed  his  fingers,  and  crouched,  waiting, 
until  she  opened  her  lids  again.  His  breath  beat  hot  into 
her  face. 

“Tell  me,”  he  whispered,  at  last,  “  tell  me  about  it.” 

She  lay  perfectly  motionless,  and  he  had  to  hold  his 
breath  to  catch  her  words.  “I  did  not  want — to  do  it,” 
she  said  ;  “  I  tried  —  I  tried  not  to  do  it.  I  only  did  it 
■ — to  save  us.  It  was  our  only  chance.” 

Again,  for  a  space,  there  was  no  sound  but  his  panting. 
Ona’s  eyes  closed  and  when  she  spoke  again  she  did  not 
open  them.  “He  told  me  —  he  would  have  me  turned 
off.  He  told  me  he  would  —  we  would  all  of  us  lose  our 
places.  We  could  never  get  anything  to  do  —  here  — 
again.  He  —  he  meant  it  —  he  would  have  ruined  us.” 

Jurgis’s  arms  were  shaking  so  that  he  could  scarcely 
hold  himself  up,  and  lurched  forward  now  and  then 
as  he  listened.  “When  —  when  did  this  begin?”  he 
gasped. 

“  At  the  very  first,”  she  said.  She  spoke  as  if  in  a 
trance.  “It  was  all  —  it  was  their  plot  —  Miss  Hender¬ 
son’s  plot.  She  hated  me.  And  he  —  he  wanted  me. 
He  used  to  speak  to  me  —  out  on  the  platform.  Then  he 
began  to  —  to  make  love  to  me.  He  offered  me  money. 
He  begged  me  —  he  said  he  loved  me.  Then  he  threat¬ 
ened  me.  He  knew  all  about  us,  he  knew  we  would 
starve.  He  knew  your  boss  —  he  knew  Marija’s.  He 
would  hound  us  to  death,  he  said  —  then  he  said  if  I 
would  —  if  I  —  we  would  all  of  us  be  sure  of  v/ork  — 
always.  Then  one  day  he  caught  hold  of  me  — he  would 
not  let  go  —  he  —  he ” 

“  Where  was  this  ?  ” 

“  In  the  hallway  —  at  night  —  after  every  one  had  gone. 
I  could  not  help  it.  I  thought  of  you  —  of  the  baby  —  of 
mother  and  the  children.  I  was  afraid  of  him  —  afraid  to 
cry  out.” 

A  moment  ago  her  face  had  been  ashen  gray,  now  it  waa 


180 


THJfi  JUlfGLB 


scarlet.  She  was  beginning  to  breathe  hard  again,  jurgis 
made  not  a  sound. 

“  That  was  two  months  ago.  Then  ne  wanted  me  to 
come  —  to  that  house.  He  wanted  me  to  stay  there.  He 
said  all  of  uo  —  that  we  would  not  have  to  work.  He 
made  me  come  there  —  in  the  evenings.  I  told  you  — 
thought  I  was  at  the  factory.  Then.  —  one  night 
it  snowed,  and  I  couldn’t  get  back.  And  last  night  — 
the  cars  were  stopped.  It  was  such  a  little  thing  —  to 
min  us  all.  I  tried  to  walk,  but  1  couldn’t.  I  didn’t 
waut  you  to  know.  It  would  have  —  it  would  have  been 
all  right.  Wd  could  have  gone  on  —  just  the  same — you 
need  never  have  known  about  it-  He  was  getting  tired 
of  me — he  V'oiild  have  let  me  alone  soon.  1  am  going  to 
have  a  baby — -I  am  getting  ugly.  He  told  me  that  — 
twice,  he  told  me,  last  night.  He  kicked  me  —  last  night 
—  too.  And  now  you  will  kill  him  —  you  —  you  will  kill 
him —  and  we  shall  die.” 

All  this  she  had  said  without  a  quiver  ;  she  lay  still  as 
death,  not  an  ej^^eiid  moving.  And  Jurgis,  too,  said  not 
a  word.  He  lif  ted  himself  by  the  bed,  and  stood  up.  He 
did  not  stop  for  another  glance  at  her,  but  went  to  the 
door  and  opened  it.  He  did  not  see  Elzbieta,  cioucuing 
terrified  in  the  corner.  He  went  out,  hatless,  leaving  the 
street  door  open  behind  him.  The  instant  his  feet  were 
on  the  sidewalk  he  broke  into  a  run. 

He  ran  like  one  possessed,  blindly,  furiously,  looking 
neither  to  the  right  nor  left.  He  was  on  Ashland  Avenue 
before  exhaustion  compelled  him  to  slow  down,  and  then, 
noticing  a  car,  he  made  a  dart  for  it  and  drew  himself 
aboard.  His  eyes  were  wild  and  his  hair  flying,  and  he 
was  breathing  hoarsely,  like  a  wounded  bull ;  but  the 
people  on  the  car  did  not  notice  this  particularly  —  per¬ 
haps  it  seemed  natural  to  them  that  a  man  who  smelt  as 
Jurgis  smelt  should  exhibit  an  aspect  to  correspond. 
They  began  to  give  way  before  him  as  usual.  The  con¬ 
ductor  took  his  nickel  gingerly,  with  the  tips  of  his  fingers, 
and  then  left  him  with  the  platform  to  himself,  Jui’gia 


THE  JUNGiiB 


181 


did  not  even  notice  it  —  his  thoughts  were  far  away. 
Within  his  soul  it  was  like  a  roaring  furnace  ;  he  stood 
waiting,  waiting,  crouching  as  if  for  a  spring. 

He  had  some  of  his  breath  back  when  the  car  came  to 
the  entrance  of  the  yards,  and  so  he  leaped  off  and  started 
again,  racing  at  full  speed.  People  turned  and  stared  at 
him,  bat  he  saw  no  one  —  there  was  the  factor3%  and  he 
bounded  through  the  doorway  and  down  the  corridoro 
He  knew  the  room  where  Ona  worked,  and  he  knew 
Connor,  the  boss  of  the  loading-gang  outside.  He  looked 
for  the  man  as  he  sprang  into  the  room. 

The  truckmen  were  hard  at  work,  loading  the  freshly 
packed  boxes  and  barrels  upon  the  cars.  Jurgis  shot  one 
swift  glance  up  and  down  the  platform  —  the  man  was  not 
on  it-  But  then  suddenly  he  heard  a  voice  in  the  corridor, 
and  started  for  it  with  a  bound.  In  an  instant  more  he 
fronted  the  boss. 

He  was  a  big,  red-faced  Irishman,  coarse-featured,  and 
smelling  of  liquor.  He  saw  Jurgis  as  he  crossed  the 
threshold,  and  turned  white.  He  hesitated  one  second, 
as  if  meaning  to  run  ;  and  in  the  next  his  assailant  was 
upon  him.  He  put  up  his  hands  to  protect  his  face,  but 
Jurgis,  lunging  with  all  the  power  of  his  arm  and  body, 
struck  him  fairly  between  the  ej’^es  and  knocked  him  back 
ward.  The  next  moment  he  was  on  top  of  him,  burying 
his  fingers  in  his  throat. 

To  Jurgis  this  man’s  whole  presence  reeked  of  the  crime 
he  had  committed ;  the  touch  of  his  body  was  madness  to 
him — it  set  every  nerve  of  him  a-tremble,  it  aroused  all 
the  demon  in  his  soul.  It  had  worked  its  will  upon  Ona, 
this  great  beast  —  and  now  he  had  it,  he  had  it  I  It  was 
his  turn  now!  Things  swam  blood  before  him,  and  he 
screamed  aloud  in  his  fury,  lifting  his  victim  and  smashing 
his  head  upon  the  flocr. 

The  place,  of  course,  was  in  an  uproar  ;  women  fainting 
and  shrieking,  and  men  rushing  in.  Jurgis  was  so  bent 
upon  his  task  that  he  knew  nothing  of  this,  and  scarcely 
realized  that  people  were  trying  to  interfere  with  him  j  it 
was  only  when  half  a  dozen  men  had  seized  him  by  the 


182 


THE  JUNGLE 


legs  and  shoulders  and  were  pulling  at  him,  that  he  under¬ 
stood  that  he  was  losing  his  prey.  In  a  flash  he  had  bent 
down  and  sunk  his  teeth  into  the  man’s  cheek  ;  and  when 
they  tore  him  away  he  was  dripping  with  blood,  and  little 
ribbons  of  skin  were  hanging  in  his  mouth. 

They  got  him  down  upon  the  floor,  clinging  to  him  by 
his  arms  and  legs,  and  still  they  could  hardly  hold  him. 
He  fought  like  a  tiger,  writhing  and  twisting,  half  flinging 
them  off,  and  starting  toward  his  unconscious  enemy.' 
But  yet  others  rushed  in,  until  there  was  a  little  mountain 
of  twisted  limbs  and  bodies,  heaving  and  tossing,  and 
working  its  way  about  the  room.  In  the  end,  by  their 
sheer  weight,  they  choked  the  breath  out  of  him,  and  then 
they  carried  him  to  the  company  police-station,  where  ho 
lay  still  until  they  had  summoned  a  patrol  v/agon  to  tak« 
him  away. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


When  Jurgis  got  up  again  he  went  quietly  enoughc 
He  was  exhausted  and  half  dazed,  and  besides  he  saw  the 
blue  uniforms  of  the  policemen.  He  drove  in  a  patrol 
wagon  with  half  a  dozen  of  them  watching  him  ;  keeping 
as  far  away  as  possible,  however,  on  account  of  the  fertil¬ 
izer.  Then  he  stood  before  the  sergeant’s  desk  and  gave 
his  name  and  address,  and  saw  a  charge  of  assault  and 
battery  entered  against  him.  On  his  way  to  his  cell 
a  burly  policeman  cursed  him  because  he  started  down  the 
wrong  corridor,  and  then  added  a  kick  when  he  was  not 
quick  enough;  nevertheless,  Jurgis  did  not  even  lift 
his  eyes  —  he  had  lived  two  years  and  a  half  in  Pack- 
ingtown,  and  he  knew  what  the  police  were.  It  was  as 
much  as  a  man’s  very  life  was  worth  to  anger  them, 
here  in  their  inmost  lair;  like  as  not  a  dozen  would  pile 
on  to  him  at  once,  and  pound  his  face  into  a  pulp.  It 
would  be  nothing  unusual  if  he  got  his  skull  cracked  in 
the  melee  —  in  which  case  they  would  report  that  he  had 
been  drunk  and  had  fallen  down,  and  there  would  be  no 
one  to  know  the  difference  or  to  care. 

So  a  barred  door  clanged  upon  Jurgis  and  he  sat  down 
upon  a  bench  and  buried  his  face  in  his  hands.  He  was 
alone;  he  had  the  afternoon  and  all  of  the  night  to  him¬ 
self. 

At  first  he  was  like  a  wild  beast  that  has  glutted  itself ; 
he  was  in  a  dull  stupor  of  satisfaction.  He  had  done  up 
the  scoundrel  pretty  well  —  not  as  well  as  he  would  have 
if  they  had  given  him  a  minute  more,  but  pretty  well,  all 
the  same;  the  ends  of  his  fingers  were  still  tingling  from 
their  contact  with  the  fellow’s  throat.  But  then,  little  by 

183 


184 


THE  JUNGLE 


little,  as  his  strength  came  back  and  his  senses  cleared,  he 
began  to  see  beyond  bis  momentary  gratification;  that  he 
had  nearly  killed  the  boss  would  not  help  Ona  —  not  the 
horrors  that  she  had  borne,  nor  the  memory  that  would 
haunt  her  all  her  days.  It  would  not  help  to  feed  her  and 
her  child  ;  she  would  certainly  lose  her  place,  while  he  — 
what  was  to  happen  to  him  God  only  knew. 

Half  the  night  he  paced  the  floor,  wrestling  with  this 
nightmare ;  and  when  he  was  exhausted  he  lay  down,  try¬ 
ing  to  sleep,  but  finding  instead,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  that  his  brain  was  too  much  for  him.  In  the  cell  next 
to  him  was  a  drunken  wife-beater  and  in  the  one  beyond  a 
yelling  maniac.  At  midnight  they  opened  the  station- 
house  to  the  homeless  wanderers  who  were  crowded  about 
the  door,  shivering  in  the  winter  blast,  and  they  thronged 
into  the  corridor  outside  of  the  cells.  Some  of  them 
stretched  themselves  out  on  the  bare  stone  floor  and  fell  to 
snoring;  others  sat  up,  laughing  and  talking,  cursing  and 
quarrelling.  The  air  was  fetid  with  their  breath,  yet  in 
spite  of  this  some  of  them  smelt  Jurgis  and  called  down  the 
torments  of  hell  upon  him,  while  he  lay  in  a  far  corner 
of  his  cell,  counting  the  throbbings  of  the  blood  in  his 
forehead. 

They  bad  brought  him  his  supper,  which  was  “  duffers 
and  dope  ”  ■—  being  hunks  of  dry  bread  on  a  tin  plate, 
and  cofee,  called  “  dope  ”  because  it  was  drugged  to 
keep  the  prisoners  quiet.  Jurgis  had  not  known  this,  or 
he  would  have  swallowed  the  stuff  in  desperation;  as  it 
was,  every  nerve  of  him  was  a-quiver  with  shame  and  rage. 
Toward  morning  the  place  fell  silent,  and  he  got  up  and 
began  to  pace  his  cell ;  and  then  within  the  soul  of  him 
there  rose  up  a  fiend,  red-eyed  and  cruel,  and  tore  out 
the  strings  of  his  heart. 

It  was  not  for  himself  that  he  suffered —  what  did  a 
man  who  worked  in  Durham’s  fertilizer-mill  care  about 
anything  that  the  world  might  do  to  him  I  What  was 
any  tyranny  of  prison  compared  with  the  tyranny  of  the 
past,  of  the  thing  that  had  happened  and  could  not  be 
recalled,  of  the  memory  that  could  never  be  effaced  I  The 


THE  JUNGLE 


185 


horror  of  it  drove  him  mad;  he  stretched  out  his  arms  to 
heaven,  crying  out  for  deliverance  from  it — and  there  was 
no  deliverance,  there  was  no  power  even  in  heaven  that 
could  undo  the  past.  It  was  a  ghost  that  would  not  down; 
it  followed  him,  it  seized  upon  him  and  beat  him  to  the 
ground.  Ah,  if  only  he  could  have  foreseen  it  —  but  then, 
he  would  have  foreseen  it,  if  he  had  not  been  a  fool!  He 
smote  his  hands  upon  his  forehead,  cursing  himself  because 
he  had  ever  allowed  Ona  to  work  where  she  had,  because 
he  had  not  stood  between  her  and  a  fate  which  every  one 
knew  to  be  so  common.  He  should  have  taken  her  away, 
even  if  it  were  to  lie  down  and  die  of  starvation  in  the 
gutters  of  Chicago’s  streets!  And  now — oh,  it  could  not 
be  true;  it  was  too  monstrous,  too  horrible. 

It  was  a  thing  that  could  not  be  faced;  a  new  shudder¬ 
ing  seized  him  every  time  he  tried  to  think  of  it.  No, 
there  was  no  bearing  the  load  of  it,  there  was  no  living 
under  it.  There  would  be  none  for  her  —  he  knew  that 
he  might  pardon  her,  might  plead  with  her  on  his  knees, 
but  she  would  never  look  him  in  the  face  again,  she 
would  never  be  his  wife  again.  The  shame  of  it  would 
kill  her — there  could  be  no  other  deliverance,  and  it  was 
best  that  she  should  die. 

This  was  simple  and  clear,  and  yet,  with  cruel  inconsist¬ 
ency,  whenever  he  escaped  from  this  nightmare  it  was  to 
suffer  and  cry  out  at  the  vision  of  Ona  starving.  They 
had  put  him  in  jail,  and  they  would  keep  him  here  a  long 
time,  years  maybe.  And  Ona  would  surely  Jiot  go  to 
work  again,  broken  and  crushed  as  she  was.  And  Elzbieta 
and  Marija,  too,  might  lose  their  places — if  that  hell- 
fiend  Connor  chose  to  set  to  work  to  ruin  them,  they 
would  all  be  turned  out.  And  even  if  he  did  not,  they 
could  not  live  —  even  if  the  boys  left  school  again, 
they  could  surely  not  pay  all  the  bills  without  him  and 
Ona.  They  had  only  a  few  dollars  now  —  they  had  just 
paid  the  rent  of  the  house  a  week  ago,  and  that  after  it  was 
two  weeks  over- due.  So  it  would  be  due  again  in  a 
week!  They  would  have  no  money  to  pa}'  it  then  —  and 
they  would  lose  the  house,  after  all  their  long,  heart-break* 

13 


186 


THE  JUNGLE 


ing  struggle.  Three  times  now  the  agent  had  warned  him 
that  he  would  not  tolerate  another  delay.  Perhaps  it  was 
very  base  of  Jurgis  to  be  thinking  about  the  house  when 
he  had  the  other  unspeakable  thing  to  fill  his  mind;  yet, 
how  much  he  had  suffered  for  this  house,  how  much'th^ 
had  all  of  them  suffered  I  It  was  their  one  hope  of  res^\ 
pite,  as  long  as  they  lived ;  they  had  put  all  their  money 
into  it — and  they  were  working-people,  poor  people,  whose 
money  was  their  strength,  the  very  substance  of  them,  body 
and  soul,  the  thing  by  which  they  lived  and  for  lack  of 
which  they  died. 

And  they  would  lose  it  all ;  they  would  be  turned  out 
into  the  streets,  and  have  to  hide  in  some  icy  garret,  and 
live  or  die  as  best  they  could  I  Jurgis  had  all  the  night 
—  and  all  of  many  more  nights  —  to  think  about  this,  and 
he  saw  the  thing  in  its  details ;  he  lived  it  all,  as  if  he 
were  there.  They  would  sell  their  furniture,  and  then 
run  intc'  debt  at  the  stores,  and  then  be  refused  credit; 
they  wosild  borrow  a  little  from  the  Szedvilases,  whose  deli¬ 
catessen  store  was  tottering  on  the  brink  of  ruin;  the 
neighbors  would  come  and  help  them  a  little  —  poor,  sick 
Jadvyga  would  bring  a  few  spare  pennies,  as  she  always 
did  when  people  were  starving,  and  Tamoszius  Kusleika 
would  bring  them  the  proceeds  of  a  night’s  fiddling. 


So  they  would  struggle  to  hang  on  until  he  got  out  of 


jail  —  or  would  they  know  that  he  was  in  jail,  would  they 
be  able  to  find  out  anything  about  him?  Would  they  be 
allowed  to  see  him  —  or  was  it  to  be  part  of  his  punish¬ 
ment  to  be  kept  in  ignorance  about  their  fate? 

His  mind  would  hang  upon  the  worst  possibilities;  he 
saw  Ona  ill  and  tortured,  Marija  out  of  her  place,  little 
Stanislovas  unable  to  get  to  Avork  for  the  snow,  the  whole 
family  turned  out  on  the  street.  God  Almighty  I  would 
they  actually  let  them  lie  down  in  the  street  and  die? 
Would  there  be  no  help  even  then — would  they  wander 
about  in  the  snow  till  they  froze?  Jurgis  had  never  seen 
any  dead  bodies  in  the  streets,  but  he  had  seen  people 
evicted  and  disappear,  no  one  knew  where ;  and  though 
the  city  had  a  reUef-bureau,  though  there  was  a  charity 


THE  JUNGLE 


187 


organization  society  in  the  stockyards  district,  in  all  his  life 
there  he  had  never  heard  of  either  of  them.  They  did  i*)t 
advertise  their  activities,  having  more  calls  than  they  could 
attend  to  without  that. 

— So  on  until  morning.  Then  he  had  another  ride  in  the 
patrol  wagon,  along  with  the  drunken  wife-beater  and  the 
maniac,  several  “  plain  drunks  ”  and  ‘‘  saloon  fighters,”  a 
burglar,  and  two  men  who  had  been  arrested  for  stealing 
meat  from  the  packing-houses.  Along  with  them  he  was 
driven  into  a  large,  white-walled  room,  stale-smelling  and 
crowded.  In  front,  upon  a  raised  platform  behind  a  rail, 
sat  a  stout,  florid-faced  personage,  with  a  nose  broken  out 
in  purple  blotches. 

Our  friend  realized  vaguely  that  he  was  about  to  be 
tried.  He  wondered  what  for  —  whether  or  not  his  vic¬ 
tim  might  be  dead,  and  if  so,  what  they  would  do  with 
him.  Hang  him,  perhaps,  or  beat  him  to  death  —  nothing 
'would  have  surprised  Jurgis,  who  knew  little  of  the  laws. 
Yet  he  had  picked  up  gossip  enough  to  have  it  occur  to 
him  that  the  loud-voiced  man  upon  the  bench  might  be 
the  notorious  Justice  Callahan,  about  whom  the  people 
of  Packingtown  spoke  with  bated  breath. 

“Pat”  Callahan  —  “Growler”  Pat,  as  he  had  been 
known  before  he  ascended  the  bench  —  had  begun  life 
as  a  butcher-boy  and  a  bruiser  of  local  reputation  ;  he  had 
gone  into  politics  almost  as  soon  as  he  had  learned  to  talk, 
and  had  held  two  offices  at  once  before  he  was  old  enough 
to  vote.  If  Scully  was  the  thumb,  Pat  Callahan  was  the 
first  finger  of  the  unseen  hand  whereby  the  packers  held 
down  the  people  of  the  district.  No  politician  in  Chicago 
ranked  higher  in  their  confidence;  he  had  been  at  it  a 
long  time  —  had  been  the  business  agent  in  the  city  coun¬ 
cil  of  old  Durham,  the  self-made  merchant,  way  back  in 
the  early  days,  when  the  whole  city  of  Chicago  had  been 
up  at  auction.  “Growler”  Pat  had  given  up  holding 
city  offices  veiy  early  in  his  career  —  caring  only  for  party 
power,  and  giving  the  rest  of  his  time  to  superintending 
his  dives  and  brothels.  Of  late  years,  however,  since 
his  children  were  growing  up,  he  had  begun  to  value 


188 


THE  JUNGLE 


respectability,  and  had  had  himself  made  a  magistrate  ^ 
a  position  for  which  he  was  admirably  fitted,  because  of 
his  strong  conservatism  and  his  contempt  for  “  foreigners.” 

Jurgis  sat  gazing  about  the  room  for  an  hour  or  two| 
he  was  in  hopes  that  some  one  of  the  family  would  come, 
but  in  this  he  was  disappointed.  Finally,  he  was  led 
before  the  bar,  and  a  lawyer  for  the  company  appeared 
against  him.  Connor  was  under  the  doctor  s  care,  the 
lawyer  explained  briefly,  and  if  his  Honor  would  hold  the 
prisoner  for  a  week  —  “  Three  hundred  dollars,”  said  his 
Honor,  promptly. 

Jurgis  was  staring  from  the  judge  to  the  lawyer  in  per¬ 
plexity.  “Have  you  any  one  to  go  on  your  bond?” 
demanded  the  judge,  and  then  a  clerk  who  stood  at 
Jurgis's  elbow  explained  to  him  what  this  meant..  The 
latter  shook  his  head,  and  before  he  realized  what  had 
happened  the  policemen  were  leading  him  away  again. 
They  took  him  to  a  room  where  other  prisoners  were 
waiting,  and  here  he  stayed  until  court  adjourned,  when 
he  had  another  long  and  bitterlj'’  cold  ride  in  a  patrol 
wagon  to  the  county  jail,  which  is  on  the  north  side  of 
the  city,  and  nine  or  ten  miles  from  the  stockyards. 

Here  they  searched  Jurgis,  leaving  him  only  his  money, 
which  consisted  of  fifteen  cents.  Then  they  led  him  to 
a  room  and  told  him  to  strip  for  a  bath ;  after  which  he 
had  to  walk  down  a  long  gallery,  past  the  grated  cell- 
doors  of  the  inmates  of  the  jail.  This  was  a  great  event 
to  the  latter  —  the  daily  review  of  the  new  arrivals,  aU 
stark  naked,  and  many  and  diverting  were  the  comments. 
Jurgis  was  required  to  stay  in  the  bath  longer  than  any 
one,  in  the  vain  hope  of  getting  out  of  him  a  few  of  his 
phosphates  and  acids.  The  prisoners  roomed  two  in  a 
cell,  but  that  day  there  was  one  left  over,  and  he  was  the 
one. 

The  cells  were  in  tiers,  opening  upon  galleries.  His 
cell  was  about  five  feet  by  seven  in  size,  with  a  stone  floor 
and  a  heavy  wooden  bench  built  into  it.  There  was  no 
window — the  only  light  came  from  windows  near  the 
roof  at  one  end  of  the  court  outside.  There  were  twc 


THE  JimGLE 


189 


Dunks,  one  above  the  other,  each  with  a  straw  mattress 
and  a  pair  of  gray  blankets  —  the  latter  stiff  as  boards 
with  filth,  and  alive  with  fleas,  bed-bugs,  and  lice.  When 
Jurgis  lifted  up  the  mattress  he  discovered  beneath  it  a 
layer  of  scurrying  roaches,  almost  as  badly  frightened  as 
himself. 

Here  they  brought  him  more  “  duffers  and  dope,”  with 
the  addition  of  a  bowl  of  soup.  Many  of  the  prisoners 
had  their  meals  brought  in  from  a  restaurant,  but  Jurgis 
had  no  money  for  that.  Some  had  books  to  read  and  cards 
to  play,  with  candles  to  burn  by  night,  but  Jurgis  was  all 
alone  in  darkness  and  silence.  He  could  not  sleep  again ; 
there  was  the  same  maddening  procession  of  thoughts  that 
lashed  him  like  whips  upon  his  naked  back.  When  night 
fell  he  was  pacing  up  and  down  his  cell  like  a  wild  beast 
that  breaks  its  teeth  upon  the  bars  of  its  cage.  Now  and 
then  in  his  frenzy  lie  would  fling  himself  against  the  walls 
of  the  place,  beating  his  hands  upon  them.  They  cut  him 
and  bruised  him — they  were  cold  and  merciless  as  the  meii 
who  had  built  them. 

In  the  distance  there  was  a  church-tower  bell  that  tolled 
the  hours  one  by  one.  When  it  came  to  midnight  Jurgis 
was  lying  upon  the  fioor  with  his  head  in  his  arms,  listen¬ 
ing.  Instead  of  falling  silent  at  the  end,  the  bell  broke 
into  a  sudden  clangor.  Jurgis  raised  his  head ;  what 
could  that  mean  —  a  fire?  God  I  suppose  there  were  to 
be  a  fire  in  this  jail  I  But  then  he  made  out  a  melody  in 
the  ringing;  there  were  chimes.  And  they  seemed  to 
waken  the  city  —  all  around,  far  and  near,  there  were  bells, 
ringing  wild  music ;  for  fully  a  minute  Jurgis  lay  lost  in 
wonder,  before,  all  at  once,  the  meaning  of  it  broke  o^“r 
him  —  that  this  was  Christmas  Eve  ! 

Christmas  Eve  —  he  had  forgotten  it  entirely  I  There 
was  a  breaking  of  flood-gates,  a  whirl  of  new  memories  and 
new  griefs  rushing  into  his  mind.  In  far  Lithuania  they 
had  celebrated  Christmas  ;  and  it  came  to  him  as  if  it  had 
been  yesterday  —  himself  a  little  child,  with  his  lost 
brother  and  his  dead  father  in  the  cabin  in  the  deep  black 
forest,  where  the  snow  fell  all  day  and  all  night  and  buried 


190 


THE  JUNGLE 


them  from  the  'world.  It  -was  too  far  off  for  Santa  ClaTsu 
in  Lithuania,  but  it  'was  not  too  far  for  peace  and  good 
will  to  men,  for  the  wonder-bearing  vision  of  the  Christ- 
child.  And  even  in  Packingtown  they  had  not  forgotten 
it —  some  gleam  of  it  had  never  failed  to  break  their  dark 
ness.  Last  Christmas  Eve  and  all  Christmas  Day  Jurgis 
had  toiled  on  the  killing-beds,  and  Ona  at  wrapping  hams, 
and  still  they  had  found  strength  enough  to  take  the 
children  for  a  walk  upon  the  avenue,  to  see  the  store 
windows  all  decorated  with  Christmas  trees  and  ablaze 
with  electric  lights.  In  one  window  there  would  be  live 
geese,  in  another  marvels  in  sugar —  pink  and  white  canes 
big  enough  for  ogres,  and  cakes  with  cherubs  upon  them  i 
in  a  third  there  would  be  rows  of  fat  yellow  turkeys,  deco¬ 
rated  with  rosettes,  and  rabbits  and  squirrels  hanging  ;  in 
a  fourth  would  be  a  fairy-land  of  toys  —  lovely  dolls  with 
pink  dresses,  and  woolly  sheep  and  drums  and  soldier 
hats.  Nor  did  they  have  to  go  without  their  share  of  all 
this,  either.  The  last  time  they  had  had  a  big  basket  with 
them  and  all  their  Christmas  marketing  to  do  —  a  roast  of 
pork  and  a  cabbage  and  some  rye-bread,  and  a  pair  of 
mittens  for  Ona,  and  a  rubber  doll  that  squeaked,  and  a 
little  green  cornucopia  full  of  candy  to  be  hung  from  the 
gas  jet  and  gazed  at  by  half  a  dozen  pairs  of  longing  eyes. 

Even  half  a  year  of  the  sausage-machines  and  the  fer¬ 
tilizer-mill  had  not  been  able  to  kill  the  thought  of  Christ¬ 
mas  in  them  ;  there  was  a  choking  in  Jurgis’s  throat  as 
he  recalled  that  the  very  night  Ona  had  not  come  home 
Teta  Elzbieta  had  taken  him  aside  and  shown  him  an  old 
valentine  that  she  had  picked  up  in  a  paper  store  for  three 
cents — dingy  and  shop- worn,  but  with  bright  colors,  and 
figures  of  angels  and  doves.  She  had  wiped  all  the  specks 
off  this,  and  was  going  to  set  it  on  the  mantel,  where  the 
children  could  see  it.  Great  sobs  shook  Jurgis  at  this 
memory  —  they  would  spend  their  Christmas  in  misery 
and  despair,  with  him  in  prison  and  Ona  ill  and  their 
home  in  desolation.  Ah,  it  was  too  cruel  I  Why  at 
least  had  they  not  left  him  alone  —  why,  after  they  had 
shut  him  in  jaiL  must  they  be  ringing  Christmas  chimes 
*n  his  ears  I 


THE  JUNGLE 


191 


But  no,  their  bells  were  not  ringing  for  him — thei? 
Christmas  was  not  meant  for  him,  they  were  simply  not 
counting  him  at  all.  He  was  of  no  consequence — he  was 
flung  aside,  like  a  bit  of  trash,  the  carcass  of  some  animal. 
It  was  horrible,  horrible  1  His  wife  might  be  dying,  his 
baby  might  be  starving,  his  whole  family  might  be  perish¬ 
ing  in  the  cold  —  and  all  the  while  they  were  ringing  their 
Christmas  chimes  I  And  the  bitter  mockery  of  it  —  all 
this  was  punishment  for  him  !  They  put  him  in  a  place 
where  the  snow  could  not  beat  in,  where  the  cold  could 
not  eat  through  his  bones  ;  they  brought  him  food  and 
drink  —  why,  in  the  name  of  heaven,  if  they  must  punish 
him,  did  they  not  put  his  family  i^j  jail  and  leave  him  out¬ 
side —  why  could  they  find  no  better  way  to  punish  him 
than  to  leave  three  vveak  women  and  six  helpless  children 
to  starve  and  freeze? 

That  was  their  law,  that  was  their  justice  I  Jurgis 
stood  upright,  trembling  with  passion,  his  hands  clenched 
and  his  arms  upraised,  his  whole  soul  ablaze  with  hatred 
and  defiance.  Ten  thousand  curses  upon  them  and  their 
law  I  Their  justice  —  it  wa,s  a  lie,  it  was  a  lie,  a  hideous, 
brutal  lie,  a  thing  too  black  and  hateful  for  any  world 
but  a  world  of  nightmares.  It  Avas  a  sham  and  a  loath¬ 
some  mockery.  There  was  no  justice,  there  was  no  right, 
anywhere  in  it  —  it  was  only  force,  it  was  tyranny,  the 
will  and  the  power,  reckless  and  unrestrained  I  They  had 
ground  him  beneath  their  heel,  they  had  devoured  all  his 
substance  ;  they  had  murdered  his  old  father,  they  had 
broken  and  wrecked  his  wife,  they  had  crushed  and  cowed 
his  whole  family  ;  and  now  they  v;ere  through  with  him, 
they  had  no  further  use  for  him  —  and  because  he  had 
interfered  with  them,  had  gotten  in  their  way,  this  was 
what  they  had  done*  to  him  I  They  had  put  him  behind 
bars,  as  if  he  had  been  a  rvild  beast,  a  thing  ivithout  sense 
or  reason,  rvithout  rights,  without  affections,  without 
feelings.  Nay,  they  would  not  even  have  treated  a  beast 
as  they  had  treated  him  I  W ould  any  man  in  his  senses 
have  trapped  a  wild  thing  in  its  lair,  and  left  its  young 
behind  to  die  ? 


192 


THE  JUNGLE 


Thene  midniglit  hours  were  fateful  ones  to  Jurgis;  in 
them  was  the  beginning  of  his  rebellion,  of  his  outlawry 
an3“his-unbelief "He  had  ho  wit  to  trace  baclT’fhe'gDcial 
crime  to  its  far  sources  —  he  could  not  say  that -it-was  the 
thing  men  have  called  “the  system”  that  was  crushing 
him  to  the  earth ;  that  it  was  the  packers,  his  inastersv 
who  had  bought  up  the  law  of  the  land,  and  had  dealt  out 
their  brutal  will  to  him  from  the  seat  of  justice.  He 
only  knew  that  he  was  wronged,  and  that  the  world  had 
wronged  him  ;  that  the  law,  that  society,  with  all  its 
powers,  had  declared  itself  his  foe.  And  every  hour  his 
soul  grew  blacker,  every  hour  he  dreamed  new  dreams  of 
vengeance,  of  defiance,  of  raging,  frenzied  hate, 

“  The  vilest  deeds,  like  poison  weeds. 

Bloom  well  in  prison  air ; 

It  is  only  what  is  good  in  Man 
That  v'^astes  and  withers  there; 

Pale  Anguish  keeps  the  heavy  gate. 

And  the  Warder  is  Despair.” 


So  wrote  a  poet,  to  whom  the  world  had  dealt  its 
justice  — 

“  I  know  not  whether  Laws  be  right, 

Or  whether  Laws  be  wrong ; 

All  that  we  know  who  lie  in  gaol 
Is  that  the  wall  is  strong. 

And  they  do  well  to  hide  their  hell, 

I'or  in  it  things  are  done  •  ^ 

That  Son  of  God  nor  son  of  Man 
Ever  should  look  upon  1  ” 


*  rs 


CHAPTER  XVII 


At  seven  o'clock  the  next  morning  J urgis  was  let  out 
to  get  water  to  wash  his  cell  —  a  duty  which  he  performed 
faithfully,  but  which  most  of  the  prisoners  were  accus¬ 
tomed  to  shirk,  until  their  cells  became  so  filthy  that  the 
guards  interposed.  Then  he  had  more  “  duffers  and  dope,” 
and  afterward  was  allowed  three  hours  for  exercise,  in  a 
long,  cement-walled  court  roofed  with  glass.  Here  were 
all  the  inmates  of  the  jail  crowded  together.  At  one  side 
of  the  court  was  a  place  for  visitors,  cut  off  by  two  heavy 
wire  screens,  a  foot  apart,  so  that  nothing  could  be  passed 
in  to  the  prisoners;  here  Jurgis  watch^'’  but 

there  came  no  one  to  see  him. 

Soon  after  he  went  back  to  his  cell,  a  keeper  opened  the 
door  to  let  in  another  prisoner.  He  was  a  dapper  young 
fellow,  with  a  light  brown  mustache  and  blue  eyes,  and  a 
graceful  figure.  He  nodded  to  Jurgis,  and  then,  as  the 
keeper  closed  the  door  upon  him,  began  gazing  c  ritically 
about  him. 

“  Well,  pal,”  he  said,  as  his  glance  encountered  Jurgis 
again,  “good  morning.” 

“  Good  morning,”  said  Jurgis. 

“A  rum  go  for  Christmas,  eh?”  added  the  other. 

Jurgis  nodded. 

The  new-comer  went  to  the  bunks  and  inspected  the 
blankets;  he  lifted  up  the  mattress,  and  then  dropped  it 
with  an  exclamation.  “  My  God  I  ”  he  said,  “  that’s  the 
worst  yet.” 

He  glanced  at  Jurgis  again,  “  Looks  as  if  it  hadn’t 
been  slept  in  last  night.  Couldn’t  stand  it,  eh?” 

“  I  didn't  want  to  sleep  last  night,”  said  Jurgis. 

193 


194 


THE  JUNGLE 


“  When  did  you  come  in?” 

“Yesterday.” 

The  other  had  another  look  round,  and  then  wrinkled 
up  his  nose.  “There’s  the  devil  of  a  stink  in  here,”  he 
said,  suddenly.  “  What  is  it?  ” 

“  It’s  me,”  said  Jurgis. 

“You?” 

“Yes,  me.” 

“Didn’t  they  make  you  wash?**’ 

“  Yes,  but  this  don’t  wash,” 

“  What  is  it  ?  ” 

“  Fertilizer.  ” 

“  Fertilizer  i  The  deuce  I  What  are  you? 

“I  work  in  the  stockyards  —  at  least  I  did  until  the 
other  day.  It’s  in  my  clothes.” 

“That’s  a  new  one  on  me,”  said  the  new-comer.  “1 
thought  I’d  been  up  against  ’em  ail.  What  are  you  in 
for?  ” 

“  I  hit  my  boss.” 

“  Oh — that’s  it.  What  did  he  do?  ” 

“He  —  he  treated  me  mean.” 

“  I  see.  Y ou’re  what’s  called  an  honest  worMng-nian  f  ’’ 

“What  are  you?”  Jurgis  asked. 

“  I  ?  ”  The  other  laughed.  “  They  say  I’m  a  cracks- 
man,”  he  said. 

“  What’s  that?  ”  asked  Jurgis. 

“  Safes,  and  such  things,”  answered  the  other. 

“Oh,”  said  Jurgis,  wonderingly,  and  stared  at  the 
speaker  in  awe,  “You  mean  you  break  into  them — you 
—  you  —  ” 

“Yes,”  laughed  the  other,  “that’s  what  they  say.” 

He  did  not  look  to  be  over  twenty-two  or  three,  though, 
as  Jurgis  found  afterward,  he  was  thirty.  He  spoke  like 
a  man  of  education,  like  what  the  world  calls  a  “gentleman.” 

“Is  that  what  you’re  here  for?”  Jurgis  inquired. 

“No,”  was  the  answer.  “I’m  here  for  disorderly  con 
duct.  They  were  mad  because  they  couldn’t  get  anj 
evidence,” 

“  Whdiia  your  name?”  the  young  fellow  continued  afte/ 


THE  JUNGLE 


195 


a  pause.  “My  name’s  Duane — Jack  Duane.  I’ve  more 
than  a  dozen,  but  that’s  my  company  one.”  He  seated  him¬ 
self  on  the  floor  with  his  back  to  the  wall  and  his  legs 
crossed,  and  went  on  talking  easily;  he  soon  put  Jurgis 
on  a  friendly  footing — he  was  evidently  a  man  of  the 
world,  used  to  getting  on,  and  not  too  proud  to  hold  con¬ 
versation  with  a  mere  laboring  man.  He  drew  Jurgis 
out,  and  heard  all  about  his  life — all  but  the  one  un¬ 
mentionable  thing;  and  tnen  he  told  stories  about  his 
own  life.  He  was  a  great  one  for  stories,  not  always  of 
the  choicest.  Being  sent  to  jail  had  a])parently  not  dis¬ 
turbed  his  cheerfulness  ;  he  had  “  done  time  ”  twice  before, 
It  seemed,  and  he  took  it  all  with  a  frolic  welcome.  What 
with  women  and  wine  and  the  excitement  of  his  vocation, 
a  man  could  afford  to  rest  now  and  then. 

Naturally,  the  aspect  of  prison  life  was  changed  for 
Jurgis  by  tlie  arrival  of  a  cell-mate.  He  could  not  turn 
his  face  to  the  wall  and  sulk,  he  had  to  s])eak  when  he 
was  spoken  to;  nor  could  he  help  being  interested 
In  the  conversation  of  Duane  —  the  first  educated  man 
with  whom  he  had  ever  talked.  How  could  he  help  lis¬ 
tening  with  wonder  while  the  other  told  of  mid¬ 
night  ventures  and  perilous  escapes,  of  feastings  and 
orgies,  of  fortunes  squandered  in  a  night?  The  young 
fellow  had  an  amused  contempt  tor  Jurgis,  as  a  sort  ot 
working  mule ;  he,  too,  had  felt  the  woi'id’s  injustice,  but 
uistead  of  bearing  it  patiently,  he  had  struck  back,  and 
struck  hard.  He  was  striking  all  the  time  —  there  was 
war  between  him  and  society.  He  was  a  genial  free¬ 
booter,  living  oft'  the  enemy,  without  fear  or  shame.  He 
was  not  always  victorious,  but  then  defeat  did  not  mean 
annihilation,  and  need  not  break  his  spirit- 

Withal  he  was  a  good-hearted  fellow  —  too  much  so,  it 
appeared.  His  story  came  out,  not  in  the  first  day,  nor  the 
second,  but  in  the  long  hours  that  dragged  by,  in  which 
they  had  nothing  to  do  but  talk,  and  nothing  to  talk  of 
but  themselves.  Jack  Duane  was  from  the  East ;  he  w'as 
a  college-bred  man  —  had  been  studying  electrical  engi¬ 
neering-  Then  his  father  had  met  with  misfortune  in  busi 


196 


THE  JUNGLE 


ness  and  killed  liimself;  and  there  had  been  his  mother 
and  a  younger  brother  and  sister.  Also,  there  was  an  in¬ 
vention  of  Duane’s;  Jurgis  could  not  understand  it  clearly, 
but  it  had  to  do  with  telegraphing,  and  it  was  a  very  im¬ 
portant  thing — there  were  fortunes  in  it,  millions  upon 
millions  of  dollars.  And  Duane  had  been  robbed  of  it  by 
a  great  company,  and  got  tangled  up  in  lawsuits  and  lost 
all  his  money.  Then  somebody  had  given  him  a  tip 
on  a  horse-race,  and  he  had  tried  to  retrieve  his  fortune 
with  another  person’s  money,  and  had  to  run  away,  and 
all  the  rest  had  come  from  that.  The  other  asked  him 
what  had  led  him  to  safe-breaking — to  Jurgis  a  wild  and 
appalling  occupation  to  think  about.  A  man  he  had  met, 
his  cell-mate  had  replied — one  thing  leads  to  another. 
Didn’t  he  ever  wonder  about  his  family,  Jurgis  asked. 
Sometimes,  the  other  answered,  but  not  often — he  didn’t 
allow  it.  Thinking  about  it  would  make  it  no  better. 
This  wasn’t  a  world  in  which  a  man  had  any  business 
with  a  family;  sooner  or  later  Jurgis  would  find  that  out 
also,  and  give  up  the  fight  and  shift  for  himself. 

Jurgis  was  so  transparently  what  he  preteneded  to  be 
that  his  cell-mate  was  as  open  with  him  as  a  child; 
it  was  pleasant  to  tell  him  adventures,  he  was  so  full 
of  wonder  and  admiration,  he  was  so  new  to  the  ways 
of  the  country.  Duane  did  not  even  bother  to  keep 
back  names  and  places — he  told  all  his  triumphs  and  his 
failures,  his  loves  and  his  griefs.  Also  he  introduced 
Jurgis  to  many  of  the  other  prisoners,  nearly  half  of  whom 
he  knew  by  name.  The  crowd  had  already  given  Jurgis 
a  name — they  called  him  “  the  stinker.”  This  was  cruel, 
but  they  meant  no  harm  by  it,  and  he  took  it  with  a  good- 
natured  grin. 

Our  friend  had  caught  now  and  then  a  whiff  from  the 
sewers  over  which  he  lived,  but  this  was  the  first  time 
that  he  had  ever  been  splashed  by  their  filth.  This  jail 
was  a  Noah’s  ark  of  the  city’s  crime — there  were 
murderers,  “  hold-up  men  ”  and  burglars,  embezzlers, 
counterfeiters  and  forgers,  bigamists,  “shoplifters,”  “con¬ 
fidence-men,”  petty  thieves  and  pickpockets,  gamblers  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


197 


procurers,  brawlers, beggars,  tramps  and  drunkards,  they 
(vere  black  and  white,  old  and  young,  Americans  and 
aatives  of  every  nation  under  the  sun.  There  were 
hardened  criminals  and  innocent  men  too  poor  to  give 
bail;  old  men,  and  boys  literally  not  yet  in  their  teens. 
They  were  the  drainage  of  the  great  festering  ulcer  of 
society ;  they  were  hideous  to  look  upon,  sickening  to 
talk  to.  All  life  had  turned  to  rottenness  and  stench  in 
them — love  was  a  beastliness,  joy  was  a  snare,  and  God 
was  an  imprecation.  They  strolled  here  and  there  about 
the  courtyard,  and  Jurgis  listened  to  them.  He  was 
ignorant  and  they  were  wise  ;  they  had  been  everywhere 
and  tried  everything.  They  could  tell  the  whole  hateful 
story  of  it,  set  forth  the  inner  soul  of  a  city  in  which 
justice  and  honor,  women’s  bodies  and  men’s  souls,  were 
for  sale  in  the  market-place,  and  human  beings  writhed 
and  fought  and  fell  upon  each  other  like  wolves  in  a  pit; 
in  which  lusts  were  raging  fires,  and  men  were  fuel,  and 
humanity  was  festering  and  stewing  and  wallowing  in  its 
own  corruption.  Into  this  wild-beast  tangle  these  men 
had  been  born  without  their  consent,they  had  taken  part 
in  it  because  they  could  not  help  it;  that  they  were  in 
jail  was  no  disgrace  to  them,  for  the  game  had  never 
been  fair,  the  dice  were  loaded.  They  were  swindlers 
and  thieves  of  pennies  and  dimes,  and  they  had  been 
trapped  and  put  out  of  the  way  by  the  swindlers  and 
thieves  of  millions  of  dollars. 

To  most  of  this  Jurgis  tried  not  to  listen.  They 
frightened  him  with  their  savage  mockery;  and  all  the 
while  his  heart  was  far  away,  where  his  loved  ones  were 
calling.  Now  and  then  in  the  midst  of  it  his  thoughts 
would  take  flight;  and  then  the  tears  would  come  into  his 
eyes — and  he  would  be  called  back  by  the  jeering  laugh¬ 
ter  of  his  companions. 

He  spent  a  week  in  this  company,  and  during  all  that 
time  he  had  no  word  from  his  home.  He  paid  one  of  his 
fifteen  cents  for  a  postal  card,  and  his  companion  wrote  a 
note  to  the  family,  telling  them  where  he  was  and  when  he 


198 


THE  JUNGLE 


would  be  tried.  There  came  no  answer  to  it,  however, 
and  at  last,  the  day  before  JSIew  Year’s,  Jurgis  bade  good- 
by  to  Jack  Duane.  The  latter  gave  him  his  address, 
or  rather  the  address  of  his  mistress,  and  made  Jurgis 
promise  to  look  him  up.  “  Maybe  I  could  help  you  out  of 
a  hole  some  day,”  he  said,  and  added  that  he  was  sorry  to 
have  him  go.  Jurgis  rode  in  the  patrol  wagon  back  to 
Justice  Callahan’s  court  for  trial. 

One  of  the  first  things  he  madr.  out  as  he  entered  the 
room  was  Teta  Elzbieta  and  little  Kotrina,  looking  pale 
and  frightened,  seated  far  in  the  rear.  His  heart  began 
to  pound,  but  he  did  not  dare  to  try  to  signal  to  them, 
and  neither  did  Elzbieta.  He  took  his  seat  in  the  prisoners’ 
pen  and  sat  gazing  at  them  in  helpless  agony.  He  saw 
that  Ona  was  not  with  them,  and  was  full  of  foreboding 
as  to  what  that  might  mean.  He  spent  half  an  hour 
brooding  over  this  —  and  then  suddenly  he  straightened 
up  and  the  blood  rushed  into  his  face.  A  man  had  come 
m  —  Jurgis  could  not  see  his  features  for  the  bandages 
that  swathed  him,  but  he  knew  the  burly  figure.  It  was 
Connor  1  A  trembling  seized  him,  and  his  limbs  bent  as 
if  for  a  spring.  Then  suddenly  he  felt  a  hand  on  his 
collar,  and  heard  a  voice  behind  him  :  “  Sit  down,  you  son 
of  a - I  ” 

He  subsided,  but  he  never  took  his  eyes  off  his  enemy. 
The  fellow  was  still  alive,  which  was  a  disappointment,  in 
one  way  ;  and  yet  it  was  pleasant  to  see  him,  all  in  peni¬ 
tential  plasters.  He  and  the  company  lawyer,  who  was 
with  him,  came  and  took  seats  within  the  judge’s  railing  i 
and  a  minute  later  the  clerk  called  Jurgis’s  name,  and  the 
policeman  jerked  him  to  his  feet  and  led  him  before  the 
bar,  gripping  him  tightly  by  the  arm,  lest  he  should  spring 
upon  the  boss. 

Jurgis  listened  while  the  man  entered  the  witness  chair, 
took  the  oath,  and  told  his  story.  The  wife  of  the  prisoner 
had  been  employed  in  a  department  near  him,  and  had 
been  discharged  for  impudence  to  him.  Half  an  hour 
later  he  bad  been  violently  attacked,  knocked  down,  and 
ahnost  choked  to  death.  He  had  brought  witnesses  — 


THE  JUNGLE 


199 


“They  will  probably  not  be  necessary,*’  observed  the 
judge,  and  he  turned  to  Jurgis.  “You  admit  attacking 
the  plaintiff  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“  Him  ?  ”  inquired  Jurgis,  pointing  at  the  boss. 

“Yes,”  said  the  judge. 

“I  hit  him,  sir,”  said  Jurgis. 

“  Say  ‘  your  Honor,’  ”  said  the  officer,  pinching  his  arm 
hard. 

“  Your  Honor,”  said  Jurgis,  obediently. 

“You  tried  to  choke  him  ?” 

“Yes,  sir,  your  Honor.” 

“  Ever  been  arrested  before  ?  ” 

“No,  sir,  your  Honor.” 

“  What  have  you  to  say  for  yourself?” 

Jurgis  hesitated.  What  had  he  to  say  ?  In  two  years 
and  a  half  he  had  learned  to  speak  English  tor  practical 
purposes,  but  these  had  never  included  the  statement  that 
some  one  had  intimidated  and  seduced  his  wife.  He  tried 
once  or  twice,  stammering  and  balking,  to  the  annoyance  of 
the  judge,  who  was  gasping  from  the  odor  of  fertilizer. 
Finally,  the  prisoner  made  it  understood  that  his  vocabu¬ 
lary  was  inadequate,  and  there  stepped  up  a  dapper  young 
man  with  waxed  mustaches,  bidding  him  speak  in  any 
language  he  knew. 

Jurgis  began  ;  supposing  that  he  would  be  given  time, 
he  explained  how  the  boss  had  taken  advantage  of  his 
wife’s  position  to  make  advances  to  her  and  had  threatened 
her  with  the  loss  of  her  place.  When  the  interpreter  had 
translated  this,  the  judge,  whose  calendar  was  crowded, 
and  whose  automobile  was  ordered  for  a  certain  hour, 
interrupted  with  the  remark  :  “  Oh,  I  see.  Well,  if  he 
made  love  to  your  wife,  why  didn’t  she  complain  to  the 
superintendent  or  leave  the  place  ?  ” 

Jurgis  hesitated,  somewhat  taken  aback;  he  began  to 
explain  that  they  were  very  poor  —  that  work  was  hard 
to  get  — 

“  I  see,”  said  Justice  Callahan ;  “  so  instead  you  thought 
you  would  knock  him  down.”  He  turned  to  the  plaintiff, 
inquiring,  “  Is  there  any  truth  in  this  story,  Mr,  Connor?  ” 


200 


THE  JUNGLE 


“Not  a  particle,  your  Honor,”  said  the  boss.  “It  is 
very  unpleasant  —  they  tell  some  such  tale  every  time  you 
have  to  discharge  a  woman  —  ” 

“  Tes,  I  know,”  said  the  judge.  “  I  hear  it  often  enough. 
The  fellow  seems  to  have  handled  you  pretty  roughly. 
Thirty  days  and  costs.  Next  case.” 

Jurgis  had  been  listening  in  perplexity.  It  was  only 
when  the  policeman  who  had  him  by  the  arm  turned  and 
started  to  lead  him  away  that  he  realized  that  sentence 
had  been  passed.  He  gazed  round  him  wildly.  “  Thirty 
days !  ”  he  panted  —  and  then  he  whirled  upon  the  judge. 
“What  will  my  family  do?”  he  cried,  frantically.  “I 
have  a  wife  and  baby,  sir,  and  they  have  no  money  —  my 
God,  they  will  starve  to  death  I  ” 

“You  would  have  done  well  to  think  about  them  before 
you  committed  tl  i  assault,”  said  the  judge,  dryly,  as  he 
turned  to  look  at  the  next  prisoner. 

Jurgis  would  have  spoken  again,  but  the  policeman  had 
seized  him  by  the  collar  and  was  twisting  it,  and  a  second 
policeman  was  making  for  him  with  evidently  hostile 
intentions.  So  he  let  them  lead  him  away.  Far  down 
the  room  he  saw  Elzbieta  and  Kotrina,  risen  from  their 
seats,  staring  in  fright ;  he  made  one  effort  to  go  to  them, 
and  then,  brought  back  by  another  twist  at  his  throat,  he 
bowed  his  head  and  gave  up  the  struggle.  They  thrust 
him  into  a  cell-room,  where  other  prisoners  were  waiting ; 
and  as  soon  as  court  had  adjourned  they  led  him  down 
with  them  into  the  “  Black  Maria,”  and  drove  him  away. 

This  time  Jurgis  was  bound  for  the  “  Bridewell,”  a  petty 
jail  where  Cook  County  prisoners  serve  their  time.  It 
was  even  filthier  and  more  crowded  than  the  county  jail ; 
all  the  smaller  fry  out  of  the  latter  had  been  sifted  into 
it  —  the  petty  thieves  and  swindlers,  the  brawlers  and 
vagrants.  For  his  cell-mate  Jurgis  had  an  Italian  fruit- 
seller  who  had  refused  to  pay  his  graft  to  the  policeman, 
and  been  arrested  for  carrying  a  large  pocket-knife ;  as 
he  did  not  understand  a  word  of  English  our  friend  was 
glad  when  he  left.  He  gave  place  to  a  Norwegian  sailor. 


THE  JUNGLE 


201 


who  had  lost  half  an  ear  in  a  drunken  brawl,  and  who 
proved  to  be  quarrelsome,  cursing  Jurgis  because  he  moved 
in  his  bunk  and  caused  the  roaches  to  drop  upon  the  lower 
one.  It  would  have  been  quite  intolerable,  staying  in  a 
cell  with  this  wild  beast,  but  for  the  fact  that  all  day  long 
the  prisoners  were  put  at  work  breaking  stone. 

Ten  days  of  his  thirty  Jurgis  spent  thus,  without  hear¬ 
ing  a  word  from  his  family ;  then  one  day  a  keeper  came 
and  informed  him  that  there  was  a  visitor  to  see  him. 
Jurgis  turned  white,  and  so  weak  at  the  knees  that  he 
could  hardly  leave  his  cell. 

The  man  led  him  dov.'n  the  corridor  and  a  flight  of 
steps  to  the  visitors’  room,  which  was  barred  like  a  cell. 
Through  the  grating  Jurgis  could  see  some  one  sitting  in 
a  chair;  and  as  he  came  into  the  room  the  person  started 
up,  and  he  saw  that  it  was  little  Stanislovas.  At  the  sight 
of  some  one  from  home  the  big  fellow  nearly  went  to  pieces 
—  he  had  to  steady  himself  by  a  chair,  and  he  put  his 
other  hand  to  his  forehead,  as  if  to  clear  away  a  mist. 
“Well?”  he  said,  weakly. 

Little  S<-^’^’°iovas  was  also  trembling,  and  aU  but  too 
frightened  to  speak.  “They  —  they  sent  me  to  teU 
you  —  ”  he  said,  with  a  gulp. 

“  Well?”  Jurgis  repeated. 

He  followed  the  boy’s  glance  to  where  the  keeper  was 
standing  watching  them.  “Never  mind  that,”  Jurgis 
cried,  wildly.  “How  are  they?” 

“Ona  is  very  sick,”  Stanislovas  said;  “and  we  are 
almos  starving.  We  can’t  get  along;  we  thought  you 
might  be  able  to  help  us.” 

Jurgis  gripped  the  chair  tighter ;  there  were  beads  of 
perspiration  on  his  forehead,  and  his  hand  shook.  “I  — 
can’t  —  help  you,”  he  said. 

“  Ona  lies  in  her  room  all  day,”  the  boy  went  on,  breath¬ 
lessly.  “She  won’t  eat  anything,  and  she  cries  all  the 
time.  She  won’t  tell  what  is  the  matter  and  she  won^t  go 
to  work  at  all.  Then  a  long  time  ago  the  man  came  for 
the  rent.  He  was  very  cross.  He  came  again  last  week.  He 
said  he  would  turn  us  out  of  the  house.  And  then  Marija 


14 


202 


THE  JUNGLE 


A  sob  choked  Stanislovas,  and  he  stopped.  “What’s 
the  matter  with  Marija  ?  ”  cried  Jurgis. 

“She’s  cut  her  hand!”  said  the  boy.  “  She’s  cut  it  bad^ 
this  time,  worse  than  before.  She  can’t  -work  and  it’s  all 
turning  green,  and  the  company  doctor  says  she  may — 
she  may  have  to  have  it  cut  otf.  And  Marija  cries  all' the 
tim.e — her  money  is  nearly  all  gone,  too,  and  we  can’t 
pay  the  rent  and  the  interest  on  the  house;  and  we  have 
no  coal  and  nothing  more  to  eat,  and  the  man  at  the  store, 
he  says — ” 

The  little  fellow  stopped  again,  beginning  to  vLiraper. 

“  Go  on !  ”  the  other  panted  in  frenzy — “  Go  on!  ” 

“I  —  I  will,”  sobbed  Stanislovas.  “ It’s  so  —  so  cold 
all  the  time.  And  last  Sunday  it  snowed  again  —  a  deep, 
deep  snow  —  and  I  couldn’t — couldn’t  get  to  work.” 

“God!”  Jurgis  half  shouted,  and  he  took  a  step  to¬ 
ward  the  child.  There  was  an  old  hatred  between  tdem 
because  of  the  snow  —  ever  since  that  dreadful  morning 
when  the  boy  had  had  his  fingers  frozen  and  Jurgis  bad 
had  to  beat  him  to  send  him  to  work.  Now  be  clenched 
his  hands,  looking  as  if  he  would  try  to  break  through  the 
grating.  “  You  little  villain,”  he  cried,  “  you  didn’t  try !” 

“I  did  —  I  did!”  wailed  Stani Jovas,  shrinking  from 
him  in  terror.  “  I  tried  all  day  — -  two  days.  Elzbieta 
was  with  me,  and  she  couldn’t  either.  We  couldn’t  walk 
at  all,  it  was  so  deep.  And  we  had  nothing  to  eat.  and 
oh,  it  was  so  cold!  I  tried,  and  then  the  third  day  Ona 
went  with  me  —  ” 

“  Ona!  ” 

“Yes.  She  tried  to  go  to  work,  too.  She  had  to.  We 
were  all  starving.  But  she  had  lost  her  place  —  ” 

J  urgis  reeled,  and  gave  a  gasp.  “  She  went  back  to 
that  place  ?  ”  he  screamed. 

“  She  tried  to,”  said  Stanislovas,  gazing  at  him  in  per-  ■ 
plexity.  “  Why  not,  J  urgis  ?  ” 

The  man  breathed  hard,  three  or  four  times.  “  Go  — 
<on,”  he  panted,  finally. 

“  I  went  with  her,”  said  Stanislovas,  “  but  Miss  Hen¬ 
derson  wouldn’t  take  her  back.  And  Connor  saw  her  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


203 


3ursed  her.  He  was  still  bandaged  up — why  did  you  hit 
him,  Jurgis?”  (There  was  some  tascinating  mystery 
about  this,  the  little  fellow  knew ;  but  he  could  get  no 
satisfaction.) 

Jurgis  could  not  speak ;  he  could  only  stare,  his  eyes 
starting  out.  “  She  has  been  trying  to  get  other  work,” 
the  boy  went  on  ;  “  but  she’s  so  weak  she  can’t  keep  up. 
And  my  boss  would  not  take  me  back,  either — Ona  says 
he  knows  Connor,  and  that’s  the  reason ;  they’ve  all  got 
a  grudge  against  i;s  now.  So  I’ve  got  to  go  down-town 
and  sell  papers  with  the  rest  of  the  boys  and  Kotrina — ” 

“Kotrina!  ” 

“  Y  es,  she’s  been  selling  papers,  too.  She  does  best,  be¬ 
cause  she’s  a  girl.  Only  the  cold  is  so  bad — its  terrible 
coming  home  at  night,  Jurgis.  Sometimes  they  can’t 
come  home  at  all — I’m  going  to  try  to  lind  them  to-night 
and  sleep  where  they  do,  it’s  so  late  and  it’s  such  a  long 
ways  home.  I’ve  had  to  walk,  and  I  didn’t  know  where 
it  was — I  don’t  know  how  to  get  back,  either.  Only 
mother  said  I  must  come,  because  you  would  want  to 
know,  and  maybe  somebody  would  help  your  family  when 
they  had  put  you  in  jail  so  you  couldn’t  work.  And  I 
walked  all  day  to  get  here — and  I  only  had  a  piece  of 
bread  for  breakfast,  Jurgis.  Mother  hasn’t  any  work 
either,  because  the  sausage  department  is  shut  down;  and 
she  goes  and  begs  at  houses  with  a  basket,  and  people  give 
her  food.  Only  she  didn’t  get  much  yesterday ;  It  was 
too  cold  for  her  fingers,  and  to-day  she  was  crying — ” 

So  little  Stanislovas  went  on,  sobbing  as  he  talked  ;  and 
Jurgis  stood,  gripping  the  rable  tightly,  saying  not  a  word, 
but  feeling  that  his  head  would  burst;  it  was  like  having 
weights  piled  upon  him,  one  after  another,  crushing  the 
life  out  of  him.  He  struggled  and  fought  within  himself 
— as  if  in  some  terrible  nightmare,  in  which  a  man  suffers 
an  agony,  and  cannot  lift  his  hand,  nor  cry  out,  but  feels 
that  he  is  going  mad,  that  his  brain  is  on  fire — 

Just  when  it  seemed  to  him  that  another  turn  of  the 
screw  would  kill  him,  little  Stanislovas  stopped.  “ 
cannot  heip  us  ?  ”  he  said  weakly. 


204 


THE  JUNGLE 


Jurgis  shook  his  head. 

They  won’t  give  you  anything  here  ?  ** 

He  shook  it  again. 

When  are  you  coming  out?  ” 

“Three  weeks  yet,”  Jurgis  answered. 

And  the  boy  gazed  around  him  uncertainly.  “  Then  I 
might  as  well  go,”  he  said. 

Jurgis  nodded.  Then,  suddenly  recollecting,  he  put 
his  hand  into  his  pocket  and  drew  it  out,  shaking. 
“Here,”  he  said,  holding  out  the  fourteen  cents.  “Take 
this  to  them.” 

And  Stanislovas  took  it,  and  after  a  little  more  hesita¬ 
tion,  started  for  the  door.  “  Good-by,  Jurgis,”  he  said, 
and  the  other  noticed  that  he  walked  unsteadily  as  he 
passed  out  of  sight. 

For  a  minute  or  so  Jurgis  stood  clinging  to  the  chair, 
reeling  and  swaying ;  then  the  keeper  touched  him  on  the 
arm,  and  he  turned  and  went  back  to  breaking  stone. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


Jtjrgis  did  not  get  out  of  the  Bridewell  quite  as  soon 
as  he  had  expected.  To  his  sentence  there  were  added 
“  court  costs  ”  of  a  dollar  and  a  half  —  he  was  supposed  to 
pay  for  the  trouble  of  putting  him  in  jail,  and  not  having 
the  money,  was  obliged  to  work  it  off  by  three  days  more  of 
toil.  Nobody  had  taken  the  trouble  to  tell  him  this  —  only 
after  counting  the  days  and  looking  forward  to  the  end  in 
an  agony  of  impatience,  when  the  hour  came  that  he  ex¬ 
pected  to  be  free  he  found  himself  still  set  at  the  stone- 
heap,  and  laughed  at  when  he  ventured  to  protest.  Then 
he  concluded  he  must  have  counted  wrong ;  but  as  another 
day  passed,  he  gave  up  all  hope  —  and  was  sunk  in  the 
depths  of  despair,  when  one  morning  after  breakfast  a 
keeper  came  to  him  with  the  word  that  his  time  was  up  at 
last.  So  he  doffed  his  prison  garb,  and  put  on  his  old 
fertilizer  clothing,  and  heard  the  door  of  the  prison  clang 
behind  him. 

He  stood  upon  the  steps,  bewildered ;  he  could  hardly 
believe  that  it  was  true,  —  that  the  sky  was  above  him 
again  and  the  open  street  before  him  ;  that  he  was  a  free 
man.  But  then  the  cold  began  to  strike  through  his 
clothes,  and  he  started  quickly  away. 

There  had  been  a  heavy  snow,  and  now  a  thaw  had  set 
in  ;  a  fine  sleety  rain  was  falling,  driven  by  a  wind  that 
pierced  Jurgis  to  the  bone.  He  had  not  stopped  for  his 
overcoat  when  he  set  out  to  “  do  up  ”  Connor,  and  so  his 
rides  in  the  patrol  wagons  had  been  cruel  experiences ; 
his  clothing  was  old  and  worn  thin,  and  it  never  had  been 
very  warm.  Now  as  he  trudged  on  the  rain  soon  wet  it 
through ;  there  were  six  inches  of  watery  slush  on  the 

205 


206 


THE  JUNGLE 


sidewalks,  so  that  his  feet  would  soon  have  been  soaked, 
even  had  there  been  no  holes  in  his  shoes. 

Jurgis  had  had  enough  to  eat  in  the  jail,  and  the  work 
had  been  the  least  trying  of  any  that  he  had  done  since  he 
came  to  Chicago  ;  but  even  so,  he  had  not  grown  strong 
- —  the  fear  and  grief  that  had  preyed  upon  his  mind  had 
worn  him  thin.  Now  he  shivered  and  shrunk  from  the 
rain,  hiding  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and  hunching  hia 
shoulders  together.  The  Bridewell  grounds  were  on  the 
outskirts  of  the  city  and  the  country  around  them  was 
unsettled  and  wild  — -  on  one  side  was  the  big  drainage 
canal,  and  on  the  other  a  maze  of  railroad  tracks,  and  so 
the  wind  had  full  sweep. 

After  walking  a  ways,  Jurgis  met  a  little  ragamuffin 
whom  he  hailed  :  “  Hey,  sonny  1  ” 

The  boy  cocked  one  eye  at  him  —  he  knew  that  Jurgis 
was  a  “  jail  bird  by  his  shaven  head.  “  Wot  yer  want?’* 
he  queried. 

“  How  do  you  go  to  the  stocnyards  ?  ”  J  urgis  de 
manded. 

“  I  don’t  go,”  replied  the  boy. 

.Jurgis  hesitated  a  moment,  nonplussed.  Then  he  said, 
“  I  mean  which  is  the  way  ?  ” 

“  Why  don’t  yer  say  so  then  ?  ”  was  the  response,  and 
the  boy  pointed  to  the  northwest,  across  the  tracks. 
“That  way.” 

“  Hovf  far  is  it  ?”  Jurgis  asked. 

“  I  dunno  ”  said  the  other.  “  Mebby  twenty  miles  or 
so.” 

“ Twenty  miles!”  Jurgis  echoed,  and  his  face  fell.  He 
had  to  walk  every  foot  of  it,  for  they  had  turned  him  out 
of  jail  without  a  penny  in  his  pockets. 

Yet,  when  he  once  got  started,  and  his  blood  had 
warmed  with  walking,  he  forgot  everything  in  the  fever 
of  his  thoughts.  All  the  dreadful  imaginations  that  had 
haunted  him  in  his  cell  now  rushed  into  his  mind  at  once. 
The  agony  was  almost  over  —  he  was  going  to  find  out; 
and  he  clenched  his  hands  in  his  pockets  as  he  strode,  fol¬ 
lowing  his  flying  desire,  almost  at  a  run.  Ona— -the 


THE  JUNGLE 


207 


baby  — the  family  —  the  house — he  would  know  the 
truth  about  them  all!  And  he  was  coming  to  the  rescue 
—  he  was  free  again  1  His  hands  were  his  own,  and  he 
could  help  them,  he  could  do  battle  for  them  against  the 
world. 

For  an  hour  or  so  he  walked  thus,  and  then  he  began 
to  look  about  him.  He  seemed  to  be  leaving  the  city  alto¬ 
gether.  The  street  was  turning  into  a  country  road,  lead¬ 
ing  out  to  the  westward;  there  were  snow-covered  fields 
on  either  side  of  him.  Soon  he  met  a  farmer  driving  a 
two-horse  wagon  loaded  with  straw,  and  he  stopped  him. 

“  Is  this  the  way  to  the  stockyards  ?  ”  he  asked. 

The  farmer  scratched  his  head.  “  I  dunno  jest  where 
they  be,”  he  said.  “  But  they’re  in  the  city  somewhere, 
and  you’re  going  dead  away  from  it  now.” 

Jurgis  looked  dazed.  “I  was  told  this  was  the  way,” 
he  said. 

“  Who  told  you  ?  ” 

“  A  boy.” 

“  Well,  mebbe  he  was  playing  a  joke  on  ye.  The  best 
thing  ye  kin  do  is  to  go  back,  and  when  ye  git  into  town 
ask  a  policeman.  I’d  take  ye  in,  only  I’ve  come  a  long 
jrays  an’  I’m  loaded  heavy.  Git  up!  ” 

So  Jurgis  turned  and  follov/ed,  and  toward  the  end  of 
the  morning  he  began  to  see  Chicago  ag'^in.  Past  endless 
blocks  of  two-story  shanties  he  walkeu,  along  wooden 
sidewalks  and  unpaved  pathways  treacherous  with  deep 
slush-holes.  Every  few  blocks  there  would  be  a  railroad 
crossing  on  the  level  with  the  sidewalk,  a  death-trap  for 
the  unwary;  long  freight-trains  would  be  passing,  the  cars 
clanking  and  crashing  together,  and  Jurgis  would  pace 
about  waiting,  burning  up  with  a  fever  of  impatience. 
Occasionally  the  cars  would  stop  for  some  minutes,  and 
wagons  and  street-cars  would  crowd  together  waiting,  the 
drivers  swearing  at  each  other,  or  hiding  beneath  umbrellas 
out  of  the  rain;  at  such  times  Jurgis  would  dodge  under 
the  gates  and  run  across  the  tracks  and  between  the  cars, 
jaking  his  life  into  his  hands. 

He  crossed  a  long  bridge  over  a  river  frozen  solid  and 


208 


THE  JUNGLE 


covered  with  slush.  Not  even  on  the  river  bank  was  the 
snow  white  —  the  rain  which  fell  was  a  diluted  solution 
of  smoke,  and  J  urgis’s  hands  and  face  were  streaked  with 
black.  Then  he  came  into  the  business  part  of  the  city, 
where  the  streets  were  sewers  of  inky  blackness,  with 
horses  slipping  and  plunging,  and  women  and  children 
flying  across  in  panic-stricken  droves.  These  streets 
were  huge  canons  formed  by  towering  black  buildings, 
echoing  with  the  clang  of  car-gongs  and  the  shouts  of 
drivers ;  the  people  who  swarmed  in  them  were  as  busy 
as  ants  —  all  hurrying  breathlessly,  never  stopping  to 
look  at  anything  nor  at  each  other.  The  solitary  tramp- 
ish-looking  foreigner,  with  water-soaked  clothing  and 
haggard  face  and  anxious  eyes,  was  as  much  alone  as  he 
hurried  past  them,  as  much  unheeded  and  as  lost,  as  if  he 
had  been  a  thousand  miles  deep  in  a  wilderness. 

A  policeman  gave  him  his  direction  and  told  him  that 
he  had  five  miles  to  go.  He  came  again  to  the  slum-dis¬ 
tricts,  to  avenues  of  saloons  and  cheap  stores,  with  long 
dingy  red  factory  buildings,  and  coal-yards  and  railroad- 
tracks;  and  then  Jurgis  lifted  up  his  head  and  began  to 
sniff  the  air  like  a  startled  animal  —  scenting  the  far-off 
odor  of  home.  It  was  late  afternoon  then,  and  he  was 
hungry,  but  the  dinner  invitations  hung  out  of  the  saloons 
were  not  for  him. 

So  he  came  at  last  to  the  stockyards,  to  the  black  vol¬ 
canoes  of  smoke  and  the  lowing  cattle  and  the  stench. 
Then,  seeing  a  crowded  car,  his  impatience  got  the  better 
of  him.  and  he  jumped  aboard,  hiding  behind  another  man, 
unnoticed  by  the  conductor.  In  ten  minutes  more  he  had 
reached  his  street,  and  home. 

He  was  half  running  as  he  came  round  the  cornerr 
There  was  the  house,  at  any  rate  —  and  then  suddenly  he 
stopped  and  stared.  What  was  the  matter  with  the  house  ? 

Jurgis  looked  twice,  bewildered;  then  he  glanced  at  the 
bouse  next  door  and  at  the  one  beyond  —  then  at  the  sa¬ 
loon  on  the  corner.  Yes,  it  was  the  right  place,  quite 
certainly  —  he  had  not  made  any  mistake.  But  the  house 
=—the  house  was  a  different  color! 


THE  JUNGLj:. 


209 


He  came  a  couple  of  steps  nearer.  Yes;  it  had  been 
gray  and  now  it  was  yellow!  The  trimmings  around  the 
windows  had  been  red,  and  now  they  were  green!  It  was 
all  newly  painted!  How  strange  it  made  it  seem! 

Jurgis  went  closer  yet,  but  keeping  on  the  other  side  of 
the  street.  A  sudden  and  horrible  spasm  of  fear  had 
come  over  him.  His  knees  were  shaking  beneath  him,  and 
his  mind  was  in  a  whirl.  New  paint  on  the  house,  and 
new  weatherboards,  where  the  old  had  begun  to  rot  off, 
and  the  agent  had  got  after  them!  New  shingles  over  the 
hole  in  the  roof,  too,  the  hole  that  had  for  six  months  been 
the  bane  of  his  soul  —  he  having  no  money  to  have  it  fixed 
and  no  time  to  fix  it  himself,  and  the  rain  leaking  in,  and 
overflowing  the  pots  and  pans  he  put  to  catch  it,  and  flood-, 
ing  the  attic  and  loosening  the  plaster.  And  now  it  was 
fixed!  And  the  broken  window-pane  replaced!  And 
curtains  in  the  windows!  New,  white  curtains,  stiff  and 
shiny  I 

Then  suddenly  the  front  door  opened.  Jurgis  stood, 
his  chest  heaving  as  he  struggled  to  catch  his  breath. 
A  boy  had  come  out,  a  stranger  to  him ;  a  big,  fat,  rosy- 
cheeked  youngster,  such  as  had  never  been  seen  in  his 
home  before. 

Jurgis  stared  at  the  boy,  fascinated.  He  came  down 
the  steps  whistling,  kicking  off  the  snow.  He  stopped  at 
the  foot,  and  picked  up  some,  and  then  leaned  against  the 
railing,  making  a  snow-ball.  A  moment  later  he  looked 
around  and  saw  Jurgis,  and  their  eyes  met;  it  was  a  hostile 
glance,  the  boy  evidently  thinking  that  the  other  had  sus¬ 
picions  of  the  snow-ball.  When  Jurgis  started  slowly 
across  the  street  toward  him,  he  ga  ve  a  quick  glance  about, 
meditating  retreat,  but  then  he  concluded  to  stand  his 
ground. 

Jurgis  took  hold  of  the  railing  of  the  steps,  for  he  was 
a  little  unsteady.  “  What  — what  are  you  doing  here?” 
he  managed  to  gasp. 

“  Go  on !  ”  said  the  boy. 

“You  —  ”  Jurgis  tried  again.  “What  do  you  want 
here  ?  ” 


210 


THE  JHHGLE 


“  Me  ?  answered  tlie  boj,  angrily.  “  I  live  here.’® 

“  You  live  here  1  ”  Jurgis  panted.  He  turned  white,  and 
clung  more  tightly  to  the  railing.  “You  live  We* 
Then  where’s  my  family  ?  ” 

The  boy  looked  surprised.  “Your  family  !  ”  he  echoed. 

And  Jurgis  started  toward  him.  “I~this  is  my 
house  I  ”  he  cried. 

“  Come  oflfl  ”  said  the  boy;  then  suddenly  the  door  up¬ 
stairs  opened,  and  he  called;  “Hey,  mal  Here’s  a  fellow 
says  he  owns  this  house.” 

A  stout  Irish  woman  came  to  the  top  of  the  steps. 
“What’s  that?”  she  demanded. 

Jurgis  turned  toward  her.  “Where  is  my  family?” 
tie  cried,  wildly.  “I  left  them  here!  This  is  my  home  1 
What  are  you  doing  in  my  home?  ” 

The  woman  stared  at  him  in  frightened  wonder,  she 
must  have  thought  she  was  dealing  with  a  maniac-— 
Jurgis  looked  like  one.  “  Your  home !  ”  she  echoed, 

“My  home  I  ”  he  half  shrieked.  “  I  lived  here,  I  tell 
you.” 

“  You  must  be  mistaken,”  she  answered  him.  “  Ho  one 
ever  lived  here.  This  is  a  new  house.  They  told  us  so. 
They — ” 

“  What  have  they  done  with  my  family  ?  ”  shouted 
Jurgis,  frantically. 

A  light  had  begun  to  break  upon  the  woman ;  perhaps 
she  had  had  doubts  of  what  “  they  ”  had  told  her.  “  I 
don’t  know  where  your  family  is,”  she  said.  “  1  bought 
the  house  only  three  days  ago,  and  there  was  nobody  here, 
and  they  told  me  it  was  all  new.  Do  you  really  mean  you 
had  ever  rented  it?” 

“Rented  it!”  panted  Jurgis.  “I  bought  it  I  I  paid 
for  it!  I  own  it!  And  they — my  God,  can’t  you  tell 
me  where  my  people  went?” 

She  made  him  understand  at  last  that  she  knew  nothing. 
Jurgis’s  brain  was  so  confused  that  he  could  not  grasp  the 
situation.  It  was  as  if  his  family  had  been  wiped  out  of 
existence ;  as  if  they  w’ere  proving  to  be  dream  people,  who 
never  had  existed  at  all.  He  was  quite  lost — but  then 


THE  JUNGLE 


211 


suddenly  he  thought  of  Grandmother  Majauszkiene,  who 
lived  in  the  next  block.  She  would  know!  He  turned 
and  started  at  a  run. 

Grandmother  Majauszkiene  came  to  the  door  herself. 
She  cried  out  when  she  saw  Jurgis,  wild-eyed  and  shaking. 
Yes,  yes,  she  could  tell  him.  The  family  had  moved ;  they 
had  not  been  able  to  pay  the  rent  and  they  had  been  turned 
out  into  the  snow,  and  the  house  had  been  repainted  and 
sold  again  the  next  week.  No,  she  had  not  heard  how 
they  were,  but  she  could  tell  him  that  they  had  gone  back 
to  Aniele  Jukniene,  with  whom  they  had  stayed  when  they 
first  came  to  the  yards.  Wouldn’t  Jurgis  come  in  and 
rest  ?  It  was  certainly  too  bad  —  if  only  he  had  not  got 
into  jail  — 

.A.nd  so  Jurgis  turned  rnd  staggered  away.  He  did  not 
go  very  far  —  round  the  corner  he  gave  out  completely, 
and  sat  down  on  the  steps  of  a  saloon,  and  hid  his  face  in 
his  hands,  and  shook  all  over  with  dry,  racking  sobs. 

Their  home  !  Their  home  I  They  had  lost  it  !  Grief, 
despair,  rage,  overwhelmed  him  —  what  was  any  imagina¬ 
tion  of  the  thing  to  this  heart-breaking,  crushing  reality 
of  it — to  the  sight  of  strange  people  living  in  his  house, 
hanging  their  curtains  in  his  windoAvs,  staring  at  him  with 
hostile  eyes  !  It  was  monstrous,  it  was  unthinkable  — 
they  could  not  do  it —  it  could  not  be  true  I  Only  think 
what  he  had  suffered  for  that  house  —  what  miseries  they 
had  all  suffered  for  it  —  the  price  tney  had  paid  for  it ! 

The  whole  long  agony  came  back  to  him.  Their  sacri¬ 
fices  in  the  beginning,  their  three  hundred  dollars  that 
they  had  scraped  together,  all  they  owned  in  the  world,  all 
that  stood  between  tneiu  uiiu  sLarvationi  And  then  tneii 
toil,  month  by  month,  to  get  together  the  twelve  dollars, 
and  the  interest  as  well,  and  now  and  then  the  taxes,  and 
the  other  charges,  and  the  repairs,  and  what  not !  Why, 
they  had  put  their  very  souls  into  their  payments  on  that 
house,  tliey  had  paid  for  it  with  their  sweat  and  tears — yes, 
more,  with  their  very  life-blood.  Dede  Antanas  had  died 
of  the  struggle  to  earn  that  money — he  would  have  been 
alive  and  strong  to-day  if  he  had  not  had  to  work  m 


212 


THE  JUNGLE 


Durham’s  dark  cellars  to  earn  his  share.  And  Ona,  too, 
had  given  her  health  and  strength  to  pay  for  it  —  she  was 
wrecked  and  ruined  because  of  it ;  and  so  was  he,  who  had 
been  a  big,  strong  man  three  years  ago,  and  now  sat  here 
shivering,  broken,  cowed,  weeping  like  a  hysterical  child. 
Ah !  they  had  cast  their  all  into  the  fight  ;  and  they  had 
lost,  they  had  lost  I  All  that  they  had  paid  was  gone — ■ 
every  cent  of  it.  And  their  house  was  gone  —  they  were 
back  where  thej''  had  started  from,  flung  out  into  the  cold 
to  starve  and  freeze  I 

Jurgis  could  see  all  the  truth  now — -could  see  himself, 
through  the  whole  long  course  of  events,  the  victim  of 
ravenous  vultures  that  had  torn  into  his  vitals  and  de¬ 
voured  him  ;  of  fiends  that  had  racked  and  tortured 
him,  mocking  him,  meantime,  jeering  in  his  face.  ""Ah, 
God,  the  horror  of  it,  the  monstrous,  hideous,  demo¬ 
niacal  wickedness  of  it  I  He  and  his  family,  helpless 
women  and  children,  struggling  to  live,  ignorant  and 
defenceless  and  forlorn  as  they  were  —  and  the  enemie 
that  had  been  lurking  for  them,  crouching  upon  their  trai 
and  thirsting  for  their  blood  !  That  first  lying  circular 
that  smooth-tongued  slippery  agent  !  That  trap  of  thi 
extra  payments,  the  interest,  and  all  the  other  charges  tha 
they  had  not  the  means  to  pay,  and  would  never  havi 
attempted  to  pay  !  And  then  all  the  tricks  of  the  packers 
their  masters,  the  tyrants  who  ruled  them, — the  shut 
downs  and  the  scarcity  of  work,  the  irregular  hours  an( 
the  cruel  speeding-up,  the  lowering  of  wages,  the  raising  o  , 
prices !  The  mercilessness  of  nature  about  them,  of  heat 
and  cold,  rain  and  snow  ;  the  mercilessness  of  the  city,  of 
the  country  in  which  they  lived,  of  its  laws  and  customs 
that  they  did  not  understand  I  All  of  these  things  had 
worked  together  for  the  company  that  had  marked  them 
for  its  prey  and  was  waiting  for  its  chance.  And  now, 
with  this  last  hideous  injustice,  its  time  had  come,  and  it 
had  turned  them  out  bag  and  baggage,  and  taken  their 
house  and  sold  it  again  !  And  they  could  do  nothing, 
they  were  tied  hand  and  foot  —  the  law  was3gaiBetH:hem, 
the  whole  machinery  of  society  "was  aT'their  oppressors’ 


THE  JUNGLE 


213 


nomniand  t  If  Jurgis  so  much  as  raised,  a  hand  against 
he  would  ^6'  ihTo'Tiiat  mid-beast  pen  from 
— "whlchhe  had  just  escaped  ! 

get  up  and  go  away  was  to  give  up,  to  acknowledge 
defeat,  to  lea/e  the  strange  family  in  possession  ;  and 
Jurgis  might  have  sat  shivering  in  the  rain  for  hours  before 
he  could  do  that,  had  it  not  been  for  the  thought  of  his 
family.  It  might  be  that  he  had  worse  things  yet  to  learn 
—  and  so  he  got  to  his  feet  and  started  away,  walking  on, 
wearily,  half-dazed. 

To  Aniele’s  house,  in  back  of  the  yards,  was  a  good  two 
miles;  the  distance  had  never  seemed  longer  to  Jurgis, 
and  when  he  saw  the  familiar  dingy-gray  shanty  his  heart 
was  beating  fast.  He  ran  up  the  steps  and  began  to  ham¬ 
mer  upon  the  door. 

The  old  woman  herself  came  to  open  it.  She  had  shrunk 
all  up  with  her  rheumatism  since  J  urgis  had  seen  her  last, 
and  her  yellow  parchment  face  stared  up  at  him  from  a 
little  above  the  level  of  the  door-knob.  She  gave  a  start 
when  she  saw  him.  “  Is  Ona  here  ?  ”  he  cried,  breath¬ 
lessly. 

“Yes,”  was  the  answer,  “she’s  here.” 

“How  —  ”  Jurgis  began,  and  then  stopped  short, 
clutching  convulsively  at  the  side  of  the  door.  From 
somewhere  within  the  house  had  come  a  sudden  cry,  a 
wild,  horrible  scream  of  anguish.  And  the  voice  was 
Ona’s. 

For  a  moment  Jurgis  stood  half-paraly zed  with  fright; 
then  he  bounded  past  the  old  woman  and  into  the  room. 

It  was  Aniele’s  kitchen,  and  huddled  round  the  stove 
were  half  a  dozen  women,  pale  and  frightened.  One  of 
them  started  to  her  feet  as  Jurgis  entered  ;  she  was  hag¬ 
gard  and  frightfully  thin,  with  one  arm  tied  up  in  band¬ 
ages —  he  hardly  realized  that  it  Avas  Marija.  He  looked 
first  for  Ona  ;  then,  not  seeing  her,  he  stared  at  the 
women,  expecting  them  to  speak.  But  they  sat  dumb, 
gazing  back  at  him,  panic-stricken  ;  and  a  second  later 
came  another  piercing  scream. 

It  was  from  the  rear  of  the  house,  and  upstairs.  Jurgis 


214 


THE  JUNGLE 


bounded  to  a  door  of  the  room  and  flung  it  open  •,  there 
was  a  ladder  leading  through  a  trap-door  to  the  garret, 
and  he  was  at  the  foot  of  it,  when  suddenly  he  heard  a 
voice  behind  him,  and  saw  Mari  ja  at  his  heels.  She  seized 
him  by  the  sleeve  with  her  good  hand,  panting  wildly, 
‘^No,  no,  Jurgis  I  Stop  I  ” 

“  What  do  you  mean  ?  ”  he  gasped. 

“You  mustn’t  go  up,”  she  cried. 

Jurgis  was  half-crazed  with  bewilderment  and  fright. 
“  What’s  the  matter  ?  ”  he  shouted.  “  What  is  it  ?  ” 

Marija  clung  to  him  tightly  ;  he  could  hear  Ona  sob¬ 
bing  and  moaning  above,  and  he  fought  to  get  away  and 
climb  up,  without  v^aiting  for  her  reply.  “No,  no,”  she 
rushed  on.  “  Jurgis  I  You  mustn’t  go  up  I  It’s  —  it’s 
the  child  I  ” 

“  The  child  ?  ”  he  echoed  in  perplexity.  “Antanas  ?  ” 

Marija  answered  him,  in  a  whisper  :  “  The  new  one  !  ” 

And  then  Jurgis  went  limp,  and  caught  himself  on  the 
ladder.  He  stared  at  her  as  if  she  were  a  ghost.  “  The 
new  one  I  ”  he  gasped.  “  But  it  isn’t  time,”  he  added, 
wildly. 

Marija  nodded.  “  I  know,”  she  said  ;  “  but  it’s  come.” 

And  then  again  came  Ona’s  scream,  smiting  him  like  a 
blow  in  the  face,  making  him  wince  and  turn  white.  Her 
voice  died  away  into  a  wail  —  then  he  heard  her  sobbing 
again,  “  My  God  —  let  me  die,  let  me  die  !  ”  And  Marija 
flung  her  arms  about  him,  crying  :  “  Come  out  1  Come 
away  I  ’" 

She  dragged  him  back  into  the  kitchen,  half  carrying 
him,  for  he  had  gone  all  to  pieces.  It  was  as  if  the  pillars 
of  his  soul  had  fallen  in  —  he  was  blasted  with  horror. 
In  the  room  he  sank  into  a  chair,  trembling  like  a  leaf, 
Marija  still  holding  him,  and  the  women  staring  at  him  in 
dumb,  helpless  fright. 

And  then  again  Ona  cried  out ;  he  could  hear  it  nearly 
as  plainl}’-  here,  and  he  staggered  to  his  feet.  “  How  long 
has  this  been  going  on  ?  ”  he  panted. 

“Not  very  long,”  Marija  answered,  and  then,  at  a  signal 


THE  JUNGLE 


215 


from  Aniele,  she  rushed  on  ;  “You  go  away,  Jurgis  ■ —  you 
can’t  help  —  go  away  and  come  back  later.  It’s  all  right 

—  it’s  —  ” 

“  Who’s  with  her  ?  ”  Jurgis  demanded  ;  and  then,  seeing 
Marija  hesitating,  he  cried  again,  “  Who’s  with  her  ?  ” 

“She’s — she’s  all  right,”  she  answered.  “Elzbieta’s 
with  her.” 

“  But  the  doctor  I  ”  he  panted.  “  Some  one  who  knows  I” 

He  seized  Marija  by  the  arm  ;  she  trembled,  and  her 
voice  sank  beneath  a  whisper  as  she  replied,  “We  —  we 
have  no  money.”  Then,  frightened  at  the  look  on  his 
face,  she  exclaimed  :  “It’s  all  right,  Jurgis  !  You  don’t 
understand  —  go  away  —  go  away  1  Ah,  if  you  only  had 
waited  I  ” 

Above  h^r  protests  Jurgis  heard  Ona  again  ;  he  was 
almost  out  of  his  mind.  It  was  all  new  to  him,  raw  and 
horrible  —  it  had  fallen  upon  him  like  a  lightning  stroke. 
When  little  Antanas  was  born  he  had  been  at  work,  and 
had  known  nothing  about  it  until  it  was  over ;  and 
now  he  was  not  to  be  controlled.  The  frightened  women 
were  at  their  wits’  end  ;  one  after  another  they  tried  to 
reason  with  him,  to  make  him  understand  that  this  was  the 
lot  of  woman.  In  the  end  they  half  drove  him  out  inco  the 
rain,  where  he  began  to  pace  up  and  down,  bareheaded  and 
frantic.  Because  he  could  hear  Ona  from  the  street,  he 
would  first  go  away  to  escape  the  sounds,  and  then  come 
back  because  he  could  not  help  it.  At  the  end  of  a  quar¬ 
ter  of  an  hour  he  rushed  up  the  steps  again,  and  for  fear 
that  he  would  bi’eak  in  the  door  they  had  to  open  it  and 
let  him  in. 

There  was  no  arguing  with  him.  They  could  not  tell  him 
that  all  was  going  well  —  how  could  they  know,  he  cried 

—  why,  she  was  dying,  she  was  being  torn  to  pieces  t 
Listen  to  her  —  listen  1  Why,  it  was  monstrous  —  it 
could  not  be  allowed  —  there  must  be  some  help  for  it  3 
Had  they  tried  to  get  a  doctor?  They  might  pay  him 
afterwards  — they  could  promise  — 

“We  couldn’t  promise,  Jurgis,”  protested  Marija,  “  We 
bad  no  money  —  we  have  scarcely  been  able  to  keep  alive 


216 


THE  JUNGLE 


“But  1  oan  work/*  Jurgis  exclaimed.  “1  can  earn 
money  1  ’* 

“  Y es,”  she  answered  —  “  but  we  thought  you  were  in 
jail.  How  could  we  know  when  you  would  return? 
They  will  not  work  for  nothing.” 

Marija  went  on  to  tell  how  she  had  tried  to  find  a  mid¬ 
wife,  and  how  they  had  demanded  ten,  fifteen,  even  twenty- 
five  dollars,  and  that  in  cash.  “  And  I  had  only  a  quarter,” 
she  said.  “  I  have  spent  every  cent  of  my  money  —  all 
that  I  had  in  the  bank  ;  and  I  owe  the  doctor  who  has 
been  coming  to  see  me,  and  he  has  stopped  because  he 
thinks  I  don’t  mean  to  pay  him.  And  we  owe  Aniele  for 
two  weeks’  rent,  and  she  is  nearly  starving,  and  is  afraid 
of  being  turned  out.  We  have  been  borrowing  and  beg¬ 
ging  to  keep  alive,  and  there  is  nothing  more  we  can 
do~” 

“And  the  children  ?  ”  cried  Jurgis. 

“  The  children  have  not  been  home  for  three  days,  the 
weather  has  been  so  bad.  They  could  not  know  what  is 
happening — it  came  suddenly,  two  months  before  we 
expected  it.” 

J urgis  was  standing  by  the  table,  and  he  caught  himself 
with  his  hands  ;  his  head  sank  and  his  arms  shook  —  it 
looked  as  if  he  were  going  to  collapse.  Then  suddenly 
Amele  got  up  and  came  hobbling  toward  him,  fumbling 
in  her  skirt  pocket.  She  drew  out  a  dirty  rag,  in  one 
'•■orae‘-  of  which  she  bad  something  tied. 

Here,  Jurgis  I  ”  she  said,  “  I  have  some  money. 
talauk  f  See  !  ” 

She  unwrapped  it  and  counted  it  out — thirty-four 
cents.  “  You  go,  now,”  she  said,  “  and  try  and  get  some¬ 
body  yourself.  And  maybe  the  rest  can  help  —  give 
him  somt!  money,  you  ;  he  will  pay  you  back  some  day, 
and  it  will  do  him  good  to  have  something  to  think  about, 
even  if  he  doesn’t  succeed.  When  he  comes  back,  maybe 
It  will  be  over.  ” 

And  so  the  other  women  turned  out  the  contents  of  their 
pocket-books  ;  most  of  them  had  only  pennies  and  nickels, 
but  they  gave  him  all.  Mrs.  Olszewski,  who  lived  next 


THE  JUNGLE 


217 


door,  and  had  a  husband  who  was  a  skilled  cattle-butcher, 
but  a  drinking  man,  gave  nearly  half  a  dollar,  enough  to 
raise  the  whole  sum  to  a  dollar  and  a  quarter.  Then 
Jurgis  thrust  it  into  his  pocket,  still  holding  it  tightly  in 
his  fist,  and  started  away  at  a  run. 


15 


CHAPTER  XIX 


‘'Madame  Hatjpt,  Hebamme,”  ran  a  iign,  swinging 
from  a  second-story  window  over  a  saloon  on  the  avenue  ; 
at  a  side  door  was  another  sign,  with  a  hand  pointing  up 
a  dingy  flight  of  steps.  Jurgis  went  up  them,  three  at  a 
time. 

Madame  Haupt  was  frying  pork  and  onions,  and  had 
her  door  half  open  to  let  out  the  smoke.  When  he  tried 
to  knock  upon  it,  it  swung  open  the  rest  of  the  way,  and 
he  had  a  glimpse  of  her,  with  a  black  bottle  turned  up  t«I. 
her  lips.  Then  he  knocked  louder,  and  she  started  and  put 
it  away.  She  was  a  Dutch  woman,  enormously  fat  —  when 
she  walked  she  rolled  like  a  small  boat  on  the  ocean,  and 
the  dishes  in  the  cupboard  jostled  each  other.  She  wore 
a  filthy  blue  wrapper,  and  her  teeth  were  black, 

“  Vot  is  it  ?  ”  she  said,  when  she  saw  .Jurgis. 

He  had  run  like  mad  all  the  way  and  was  so  out  of  breath 
he  could  hardly  speak.  His  hair  was  disordered  and  his 
eyes  wild  —  he  looked  like  a  man  that  had  risen  from  the 
tomb.  “  My  wife  !  ”  he  panted.  “  Come  quickly  !  ” 
Madame  Haupt  set  the  frying  pan  to  one  side  and  wiped 
her  hands  on  her  wrapper.  “  You  vant  me  to  come  for  a 
case  ?  ”  she  inquired. 

“  Yes,”  gasped  Jurgis. 

“  I  haf  yust  come  back  from  a  case,”  she  said.  “  I  haf 
had  no  time  to  eat  my  dinner.  Still  ~  if  it  is  so  bad  —  ” 
“  Yes  —  it  is  I  ”  cried  he. 

“  Veil,  den,  perhaps  —  vot  you  pay  ?  ” 

“I  — -I  —  how  much  do  you  want  ?  ”  Jurgis  stammered, 
“  Tventy-five  dollars.” 

His  face  fell.  “  I  can’t  pay  that,”  he  said, 

218 


THE  JUNGLE 


219 


The  woman  was  watching  him  narrowly..  How  much 
do  you  pay  ?  ”  she  demanded. 

“  Must  I  pay  now — right  away  2  ” 

“Yes;  all  my  customers  do.” 

“  I — I  haven’t  much  money,”  J  urgis  began  in  an  agony 
of  dread.  “  I’ve  been  in — in  trouble — and  my  money  is 
gone.  But  I’ll  pay  you — every  cent — just  as  soon  as  I 
can ;  I  can  work^ — 

“  Vot  is  your  work?  ” 

“  I  have  no  place  now.  I  must  get  one.  But  I — ” 

“  How  much  haf  you  got  now  ?  ” 

He  could  hardly  bring  himself  to  reply.  When  he  said 
“A  dollar  and  a  quarter,”  the  woman  laughed  in  his  face. 

“  I  vould  not  put  on  my  hat  for  a  dollar  und  a  quarter,” 
she  said. 

“  Its  all  I’ve  got,”  he  pleaded,  his  voice  breaking.  “  I 
must  get  some  one — my  wife  will  die.  I  can’t  help  it — 

Madame  Haupt  had  put  back  her  pork  and  onions  on 
the  stove.  She  turned  to  him  and  answered,  out  of  the 
steam  and  noise ;  “  Git  me  ten  dollars  cash,  und  so  you 
can  pay  me  the  rest  next  mont’.” 

“I  can’t  do  it — I  haven’t  got  it!”  J  urgis  protested. 
“  I  tell  you  I  have  only  a  dollar  and  a  quarter.” 

The  woman  turned  to  her  work,  “i  don’t  believe  you,” 
she  said.  “Dot  is  all  to  try  to  sheat  me.  Vot  is  de  reason 
a  big  man  like  you  has  got  only  a  dollar  und  a  quarter?  ” 
“I’ve  just  been  in  jail,”  Jurgis  cried, — he  was  ready  to 
get  down  upon  his  knees  to  the  woman, — “  and  I  had  no 
money  before,  and  my  family  has  almost  starved.” 

“  Yere  is  your  friends,  dot  ought  to  help  you?  ” 

“They  are  all  poor,”  he  answered.  “They  gave  me 
this.  I  have  done  everything  I  can —  ” 

“  Haven't  you  got  notting  you  can  sell  ?  ” 

“  I  have  nothing,  i  tell  you — I  have  nothing,”  he  cried, 
liantically. 

“Can’t  you  borrow  it,  den  2  Don’t  your  store  people 
trust  you?”  Then,  as  he  shook  his  head,  she  went  on; 
“Listen  to  me — if  you  git  me  vou  vill  be  glad  of  it 


220 


THE  JITNGM 


I  vill  save  your  wife  und  baby  for  you,  und  it  vill  not  seem 
like  mooch  to  you  in  de  end.  If  you  loose  dem  now  how 
you  tink  you  feel  den  ?  Und  here  is  a  lady  dot  knows  her 
Dusiness  —  I  could  send  you  to  people  in  dis  block,  und 
dey  vould  tell  you  —  ” 

Madame  Haupt  was  pointing  her  cooking-fork  at  J  urgis 
persuasively  ;  but  her  words  were  more  than  he  could 
bear.  He  flung  up  his  hands  with  a  gesture  of  despair 
and  turned  and  started  away.  “  It’s  no  use,”  he  exclaimed 
—  but  suddenly  he  heard  the  woman’s  voice  behind  him 
again  :  — 

“I  vill  make  it  five  dollars  for  you.” 

She  followed  behind  him,  arguing  with  him.  “  You  vill 
be  foolish  not  to  take  such  an  offer,”  she  said.  “You 
von’t  find  nobody  to  go  out  on  a  rainy  day  like  dis  for 
less.  Vy,  I  haf  never  took  a  case  in  my  life  so  sheap  as 
dot.  I  couldn’t  pay  mine  room  rent  —  ” 

Jurgis  interrupted  her  with  an  oath  of  rage.  “If  I 
haven’t  got  it,”  he  shouted,  “  how  can  I  pay  it  ?  Damn 
it,  I  would  pay  you  if  I  could,  but  I  tell  you  I  haven’t  got 
it.  I  haven’t  got  it  I  Do  you  hear  me — I  haven't  got 
it!" 

He  turned  and  started  away  again.  He  was  halfway 
down  the  stairs  before  Madame  Haupt  could  shout  to  him : 
“  Vait  I  I  vill  go  mit  you  1  Come  back  I  ” 

He  went  back  into  the  room  again. 

“  It  is  not  goot  to  tink  of  anybody  suffering,”  she  said, 
in  a  melancholy  voice.  “I  might  as  veil  go  mit  you  for 
nottinsr  as  vot  you  offer  me,  but  I  vill  try  to  help  you. 
How  far  is  it  ?  ” 

“  Three  or  four  blocks  from  here.” 

“Tree  or  four  I  Und  so  I  shall  get  soaked  I  Gott  in 
Himmel,  it  ought  to  be  vorth  more  I  Vun  dollar  und  a 
quarter,  und  a  day  like  dis  I  But  you  understand  now 
you  vill  pay  me  de  rest  of  twenty-five  dollars  soon  ?  ” 

“As  soon  as  I  can.” 

“  Some  time  dis  mont’  ?  ” 

“  Yes,  within  a  month,”  said  poor  Jurgis.  “  Anything! 
Hurrv  up  t  ” 


THE  JUNGIlE 


221 


**  Vere  is  de  dollar  und  a  quarter  ?  persisted  Madame 
Haupt,  relentlessly, 

Jurgis  put  the  money  on  the  table  and  the  woman 
counted  it  and  stowed  it  a  way.  Then  she  wiped  her 
greasy  hands  again  and  proceeded  to  get  ready,  complain* 
ing  all  the  time ;  she  was  so  fat  that  it  was  painful  for  her 
to  move,  and  she  grunted  and  gasped  at  every  step.  She 
took  off  her  wrapper  without  even  taking  the  trouble  to 
turn  her  back  to  Jurgis,  and  put  on  her  corsets  and  dress. 
Then  there  was  a  black  bonnet  which  had  to  be  adjusted 
carefully,  and  an  umbrella  which  was  mislaid,  and  a  bag 
full  of  necessaries  which  had  to  be  collected  from  here  and 
there  —  the  man  being  nearly  crazy  with  anxiety  in  the 
meantime.  When  they  were  on  the  street  he  kept  about 
four  paces  ahead  of  her,  turning  now  and  then,  as  if  he 
could  hurry  her  on  by  the  force  of  his  desire.  But 
Madame  Haupt  could  only  go  so  far  at  a  step,  and  it  took 
all  her  attention  to  get  the  needed  breath  for  that. 

They  came  at  last  to  the  house,  and  to  the  group  of 
frightened  women  in  the  kitchen.  It  was  not  over  yet, 
Jurgis  learned  —  he  heard  Ona  crying  still;  and  mean¬ 
time  Madame  Haupt  removed  her  bonnet  and  laid  it  on 
the  mantelpiece,  and  got  out  of  her  bag,  first  an  old  dress 
and  then  a  saucer  of  goose-grease,  which  she  proceeded  to 
rub  upon  her  hands.  The  more  cases  this  goose-grease  is 
used  in,  the  better  luck  it  brings  to  the  midwife,  and  so  she 
keeps  it  upon  her  kitchen  mantelpiece  or  stowed  away  in 
a  cupboard  with  her  dirty  clothes,  for  months,  and  some¬ 
times  even  for  years. 

Then  they  escorted  her  to  the  ladder,  and  Jurgis  heard 
her  give  an  exclamation  of  dismay.  “  Gott  in  Himrael, 
vot  for  haf  you  brought  me  to  a  place  like  dis  ?  I  could 
not  climb  up  dot  ladder.  I  could  not  git  troo  a  trap-door  I 
1  vill  not  try  it  —  vy,  I  might  kill  myself  already.  Vot 
sort  of  a  place  is  dot  for  a  woman  to  bear  a  child  in 
—  up  in  a  garret,  mit  only  a  ladder  to  it?  You  ought 
to  be  ashamed  of  yourselves  I  ”  Jurgis  stood  in  the  door, 
way  and  listened  to  her  scolding,  half  drowning  out  the 
horrible  moans  and  screams  of  Ona. 


222 


THE  JUNGLE 


At  last  Aniele  succeeded  in  pacifying  her,  and  she 
essayed  the  ascent ;  then,  however,  she  had  to  be  stopped 
while  the  old  woman  cautioned  her  about  the  floor  of  the 
garret.  They  had  no  real  floor — they  had  laid  old  boards 
in  one  part  to  make  a  place  for  the  family  to  live  ;  it  was 
all  right  and  safe  there,  but  the  other  part  of  the  garret 
had  only  the  joists  of  the  floor,  and  the  lath  and  plaster  of 
the  ceiling  below,  and  if  one  stepped  on  this  there  would 
be  a  catastrophe.  As  it  was  half  dark  up  above,  perhaps 
one  of  the  others  had  best  go  up  first  with  a  candle.  Then 
there  were  more  outcries  and  threatening,  until  at  last 
Jurgis  had  a  vision  of  a  pair  of  elephantine  legs  disap¬ 
pearing  through  the  trap-door,  and  felt  the  house  shake  as 
Madam  Haupt  started  to  walk.  Then  suddenly  Aniele 
came  to  him  and  took  him  by  the  arm. 

“Now,”  she  said,  “you  go  away.  Do  as  I  tell  you — 
you  have  done  all  you  can,  and  you  are  only  in  the  way. 
Go  away  and  stay  away.” 

“  But  where  shall  I  go  ?”  Jurgis  asked,  helplessly. 

“  I  don’t  know  where,”  she  answered.  “Go  on  the 
street,  if  there  is  no  other  place — only  go!  And  stay  all 
night!  ” 

In  the  end  she  and  Marija  pushed  him  out  of  the  door 
and  shut  it  behind  him.  It  was  just  about  sundown,  and 
it  was  turning  cold — the  rain  had  changed  to  snow,  and 
the  slush  was  freezing.  Jurgis  shivered  in  his  thin  cloth¬ 
ing,  and  put  his  hands  into  his  pockets  and  started  away. 
He  had  not  eaten  since  morning,  and  he  felt  weak  and  ill; 
with  a  sudden  throb  of  hope  he  recollected  he  was  only  a 
few  blocks  from  the  saloon  where  he  had  been  wont  to  eat 
his  dinner.  They  might  have  mercy  on  him  there,  or  he 
might  meet  a  friend.  He  set  out  for  the  place  as  fast  as 
he  could  walk. 

“  Hello,  Jack,”  said  the  saloon-keeper,  when  he  entered 
■ — they  call  all  foreigners  and  unskilled  men  “Jack”  in 
Packingtown.  “  Where’ve  you  been?  ” 

Jurgis  went  straight  to  the  bar.  “I’ve  been  in  jail,” 
he  said,  “  and  I’ve  just  got  out.  I  walked  home  all  the 
way,  and  I’ve  not  a  cent,  and  had  nothing  to  eat  since  this 


THE  JUNGLE 


223 


morning.  And  I’ve  lost  my  Lome,  and  my  wife’s  ill,  and 
I’m  done  iip.” 

The  saloon-keeper  gazed  at  him,  witL  Lis  Laggard  wLite 
face  and  Lis  blue  trembling  lips.  Then  Le  pushed  a  big 
bottle  toward  him.  “  Fill  her  up  !”  Le  said. 

Jurgis  could  hardly  hold  the  bottle,  Lis  hands  shook  so. 
“Don’t  be  afraid,”  said  the  saloon-keeper;  “  Lll  her  up!’ 

So  Jurgis  drank  a  Luge  glass  of  whiskey,  and  theii 
turned  to  the  lunch-counter,  in  obedience  to  the  other’s 
suggestion.  He  ate  all  Le  dared,  stuffing  it  in  as  fast  as 
Le  could;  and  then,  after  trying  to  speak  Lis  gratitude, 
Le  went  and  sat  down  by  the  big  red  stove  in  the  middle 
of  the  room. 

It  was  too  good  to  last,  however — like  all  things  in  this 
Lard  world.  His  soaked  clothing  began  to  steam,  and  the 
horrible  stench  of  fertilizer  to  fill  the  room.  In  an  Lour 
or  so  the  packing-houses  would  be  closing  and  the  men 
coming  in  from  their  work;  and  they  would  not  come 
into  a  place  that  smelt  of  Jurgis.  Also  it  was  Saturday 
night,  and  in  a  couple  of  Lours  would  come  a  violin  and  a 
cornet,  and  in  the  rear  part  of  the  saloon  the  families  of 
the  neighborhood  would  dance  and  feast  upon  wienerwurst 
and  lager,  until  two  or  three  o’clock  in  the  morning.  The 
saloon-keeper  coughed  once  or  twice,  and  then  remarked, 
“  Say,  Jack,  I’m  afraid  you’ll  Lave  to  quit.” 

He  was  used  to  the  sight  of  human  wrecks,  this  saloon¬ 
keeper ;  he  “  fired  ”  dozens  of  them  every  night,  just  as 
haggard  and  cold  and  foi'lorn  as  this  one.  But  they  were 
all  men  who  had  given  up  and  been  counted  out,  while 
Jurgis  was  still  in  the  fight,  and  had  reminders  of  decency 
about  him.  As  he  got  up  meekly,  the  other  reflected  that 
he  had  always  been  a  steady  man,  and  might  soon  be  a 
good  customer  again.  “You’ve  been  up  against  it,  I  see,” 
he  said.  “Come  this  way.” 

In  the  rear  of  the  saloon  were  the  cellar-stairs.  Ther^ 
was  a  door  above  and  another  below,  both  safely  padlock¬ 
ed, making  the  stairs  an  admirable  place  to  stow  away  a  cus¬ 
tomer  who  might  still  chance  to  have  money,  or  a  political 
light  whom  it  was  not  advisable  to  kick  out  of  doorr 


224 


THE  JtJNGLE 


So  J urgis  spent  the  night.  The  whiskey  had  only  half 
warmed  him,  and  he  could  not  sleep,  exhausted  as  he  was; 
he  would  nod  forward,  and  then  start  up,  shivering  with 
the  cold,  and  begin  to  remember  again.  Hour  after  hour 
passed,  until  he  could  only  persuade  himself  that  it  was 
not  morning  by  the  sounds  of  music  and  laughter  and 
singing  that  were  to  be  heard  from  the  room.  When  at 
last  these  ceased,  he  expected  that  he  would  be  turned  out 
into  the  street ;  as  this  did  not  happen,  he  fell  to  wonder- 
ing  whether  the  man  had  forgotten  him. 

In  the  end,  when  the  silence  and  suspense  were  no  longer 
to  be  borne,  he  got  up  and  hammered  on  the  door;  and 
the  proprietor  came,  yawning  and  rubbing  his  eyes. 
He  was  keeping  open  all  night,  and  dozing  between  cus¬ 
tomers. 

“  I  want  to  go  home,”  Jurgis  said.  “  I’m  worried  about 
my  wife — ■!  can’t  wait  any  longer.” 

“Why  the  hell  didn’t  you  say  so  before?”  said  the  man. 
“I  thought  you  didn’t  have  any  home  to  go  to.” 

Jurgis  went  outside.  It  was  four  o’clock  in  the  morn¬ 
ing,  and  as  black  as  night.  There  were  three  or  four 
inches  of  fresh  snow  on  the  ground,  and  the  flakes  were 
falling  thick  and  fast.  He  turned  toward  Aniele’s  and 
started  at  a  run. 

There  was  a  light  burning  in  the  kitchen  window  and 
the  blinds  were  drawn.  The  door  was  unlocked  and 
Jurgis  rushed  in. 

Aniele,  Marija,  and  the  rest  of  the  women  were  huddled 
about  the  stove,  exactly  as  before ;  with  them  were 
several  new-comers,  Jurgis  noticed  —  also  he  noticed  that 
the  house  was  silent. 

“  Well  ?  ”  he  said. 

No  one  answered  him ;  they  sat  staring  at  him  with 
their  pale  faces.  He  cried  again  :  “Well?” 

And  then,  by  the  light  of  the  smoky  lamp,  he  saw 
Marija,  who  sat  nearest  him,  shaking  her  head  slowly. 
“Not  yet,”  she  said. 

And  Jurgis  gave  a  cry  of  dismay.  “  Not  yet  ?  ” 


THE  JUJSGLE 


226 


Again  Marija’s  head  shook.  The  poor  fellow  stood 
dumfounded.  “I  don’t  hear  her,”  he  gasped. 

“She’s  been  quiet  a  long  time,”  replied  the  other. 

There  was  another  pause  —  broken  suddenly  by  a  voice 
from  the  attic :  “  Hello,  there  1  ” 

Several  of  the  women  ran  into  the  next  room,  while 
Marija  sprang  toward  Jurgis.  “Wait  here  1”  she  cried, 
and  the  two  stood,  pale  and  trembling,  listening.  In  a 
few  moments  it  became  clear  that  Madame  Haupt  was 
engaged  in  descending  the  ladder,  scolding  and  exhorting 
again,  while  the  ladder  creaked  in  protest.  In  a  moment  or 
two  she  reached  the  ground,  angry  and  breathless,  and  they 
heard  her  coming  into  the  room.  Jurgis  gave  one  glance 
at  her,  and  then  turned  white  and  reeled.  She  had  her 
jacket  off,  like  one  of  the  workers  on  the  killing-beds. 
Her  hands  and  arms  were  smeared  with  blood,  and  blood 
was  splashed  upon  her  clothing  and  her  face. 

She  stood  breathing  hard,  and  gazing  about  her;  no 
one  made  a  sound. 

“  I  haf  dene  my  best,”  she  began  suddenly.  “  I  can  do 
Dotting  more  —  dere  is  no  use  to  try.” 

Again  there  was  silence. 

“It  ain’t  my  fault,”  she  said.  “You  had  ought  to  haf 
had  a  doctor,  und  not  vaited  so  long  —  it  vas  too  late 
already  ven  I  come.”  Once  more  there  was  deathlike 
stillness.  Marija  was  clutching  Jurgis  with  all  the  power 
of  her  one  well  arm. 

Then  suddenly  Madame  Haupt  turned  to  Aniele.  “  You 
haf  not  got  someting  to  drink,  hey?  ”  she  queried.  “  Some 
brandy?  ” 

Aniele  shook  her  head. 

“  Herr  Gott  I  ”  exclaimed  Madame  Haupt.  “  Such  peo¬ 
ple  I  Perhaps  you  vill  give  me  someting  to  eat  den  —  1 
haf  had  netting  since  yesterday  morning,  und  I  haf 
vorked  myself  near  to  death  here.  If  I  could  haf  known 
it  vas  like  dis,  I  vould  never  haf  come  for  such  money  as 
you  gif  me.” 

At  this  moment  she  chanced  to  look  round,  and  saw 
Jurgis.  She  shook  her  finger  at  him.  “  You  understand 


226 


THE  JUNGLE 


me,”  she  said,  “you  pays  me  dot  money  yust  de  same!  Ift 
is  not  my  fault  dat  you  send  for  me  so  late  1  can’t  help 
you  vife.  It  is  not  my  fault  if  der  baby  comes  mit  one 
arm  first,  so  dot  I  can’t  save  it.  I  haf  tried  all  night, 
und  in  dot  place  vere  it  is  not  fit  for  dogs  to  be  born, 
und  mit  notting  to  eat  only  vot  I  brings  in  mine  own 
pockets.” 

Here  Madame  Haupt  paused  for  a  moment  to  get  her 
breath ;  and  Marija,  seeing  the  beads  of  sweat  on  Jurgis’s 
forehead,  and  feeling  the  quivering  of  his  frame,  broke 
out  in  a  low  voice :  “  How  is  Ona?  ” 

“How  is  she?”  echoed  Madame  Haupt.  “How  do  you 
tink  she  can  be  ven  you  leave  her  to  kill  herself  so  ?  1 

told  dem  dot  ven  they  send  for  de  priest.  She  is  young, 
und  she  might  haf  got  over  it,  und  been  veil  und  strong, 
if  she  been  treated  right.  She  fight  hard,  dot  girl — she 
is  not  yet  quite  dead.” 

And  Jurgis  gave  a  frantic  scream.  “  Dead!  ” 

“She  vill  die,  of  course,”  said  the  other,  angrily.  “Der 
baby  is  dead  now.” 

The  garret  was  lighted  by  a  candle  stuck  upon  a  board ; 
it  had  almost  burned  itself  out,  and  was  sputtering  and 
smoking  as  Jurgis  rushed  up  the  ladder.  He  could  make 
out  dimly  in  one  corner  a  pallet  of  rags  and  old  blankets, 
spread  upon  the  fiuor;  at  the  foot  of  it  was  a  crucifix, 
and  near  it  a  priest  muttering  a  prayer.  In  a  far  corner 
crouched  Elzbieta,  moaning  and  wailing.  Upon  the  pallet 
lay  Ona. 

She  was  covered  with  a  blanket,  but  he  could  see  her 
shoulders  and  one  arm  lying  bare ;  she  was  so  shrunken 
he  would  scarcely  have  known  her — she  was  all  but  a 
skeleton,  and  as  white  as  a  piece  cf  chalk.  Her  eyelids 
were  closed,  and  she  lay  still  as  death.  He  staggered 
toward  her  and  fell  upon  his  knees  with  a  cry  of  anguish  ? 
“Ona!  Ona!” 

She  did  not  stir.  He  caught  her  hand  in  his,  and  began 
to  clasp  it  frantically,  calling:  “Look  at  me!  Answer  me  J 
It  is  Jurgis  come  back — don’t  you  hear  me?” 


THE  JUNGLE 


227 


There  was  the  faintest  quivering  of  the  eyelids,  and  he 
called  again  in  frenzy ;  “  Ona  1  Ona  1  ” 

Then  suddenly  her  eyes  opened  —  one  instant.  One 
instant  she  looked  at  him — -there  was  a  flash  or  recog-' 
nition  between  them,  he  saw  her  afar  off,  as  through 
a  dim  vista,  standing  forlorn.  He  stretched  out  his 
arms  to  her,  he  called  her  in  wild  despair;  a  fearful 
yearning  surged  up  in  him,  hunger  for  her  that  was 
agony,  desire  that  was  a  new  being  born  within  him,  tear¬ 
ing  his  heartstrings,  torturing  him.  But  it  was  all  in 
vain  —  she  faded  from  him,  she  slipped  back  and  was  gone. 
And  a  wail  of  anguish  burst  from  him,  great  sobs  shook 
all  his  frame,  and  hot  tears  ran  down  his  cheeks  and  fell 
upon  her.  He  clutched  her  hands,  he  shook  her,  he  caught 
her  in  his  arms  and  pressed  her  to  him  ;  but  she  lay  cold 
and  still  —  she  was  gone  —  she  was  gone  I 

The  word  rang  through  him  like  the  sound  of  a  bell, 
echoing  in  the  far  dejiths  of  him,  making  forgotten  chords 
to  vibrate,  old  shadowy  fears  to  stir  —  fears  of  the  dark, 
fears  of  the  void,  fears  of  annihilation.  ?’ie  was  deadl 
She  was  dead  I  He  would  never  see  her  again,  never  hear 
her  again  I  An  icy  horror  of  loneliness  seized  him ;  he 
saw  himself  standing  apart  and  watching  all  the  world 
fade  away  from  him  — a  world  of  shadows,  of  fickle 
dreams.  He  was  like  a  little  child,  in  his  fright  and 
grief ;  he  called  and  called,  and  got  no  answer,  and  his 
cries  of  despair  echoed  through  the  house,  making  the 
women  down-stairs  draw  nearer  to  each  other  in  fear.  He 
was  inconsolable,  beside  himself  —  the  priest  came  and  laid 
his  hand  up^^u  his  shoulder  and  whispered  to  him,  but  he 
heard  not  a  ..ound.  He  was  gone  away  lumself,  stum¬ 
bling  through  the  shadows,  and  groping  after  the  soul 
that  had  fled. 

So  he  lay.  The  gray  dawn  came  up  and  crept  into  the 
attic.  The  priest  left,  the  women  left,  and  he  was  alone 
with  the  still,  white  figure  —  quieter  now,  but  moaning 
and  shuddering,  wrestling  with  the  grisly  fiend.  Now 
and  then  he  would  raise  himself  and  stare  at  the  wiilte 


228 


THE  JUNGLE 


mask  before  him,  then  hide  his  eyes,  because  he  could  not 
bear  it.  Dead  I  dead  f  And  she  was  only  a  girl,  she  was 
barely  eighteen  I  Her  Jife  had  hardly  begun  —  and  here 
she  lay  murdered  —  mangled,  tortured  to  death  I 

It  was  morning  when  he  rose  xtp  and  came  down  into 
the  kitchen  —  haggard  and  ashen  gray,  reeling  and  dazed. 
More  of  the  neighbors  had  come  in,  and  they  stared  at  him 
in  silence  as  he  sank  down  upon  a  chair  by  the  table  and 
buried  his  face  in  his  arms. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  front  door  opened ;  a  blast  of 
cold  and  snow  rushed  in,  and  behind  it  little  Kotrina, 
breathless  from  running,  and  blue  with  the  cold.  “I’m 
home  again  I”  she  exclaimed.  “  I  could  hardly  —  ” 

And  then,  seeing  Jurgis,  she  stopped  with  an  exclama¬ 
tion.  Looking  from  one  to  another  she  saw  that  some¬ 
thing  had  happened,  and  she  asked,  in  a  lower  voice » 
“What’s  the  matter?” 

Before  any  one  could  reply,  Jurgis  started  up;  he  went 
toward  her,  walking  unsteadily.  “  Where  have  you  been?  ” 
he  demanded. 

“  Selling  papers  with  the  boys,”  she  said.  “  The 
snow  —  ” 

“  Have  you  any  money?  ”  he  demanded. 

“  Yes.” 

“  How  much  ?  ” 

“  Nearly  three  dollars,  Jurgis.” 

“  Give  it  to  me.” 

Kotrina,  frightened  by  his  manner,  glanced  at  the  others. 
“  Give  it  to  me  I  ”  he  commanded  again,  and  she  put  her 
hand  into  her  pocket  and  pulled  out  a  lump  of  coins  tied 
in  a  bit  of  rag.  Jurgis  took  it  without  a  word,  and  went 
out  of  the  door  and  down  the  street. 

Three  doors  away  was  a  saloon.  “  Whiskey,”  he  said,  as 
he  entered,  and  as  the  man  pushed  him  some,  he  tore  at 
the  rag  with  his  teeth  and  pulled  out  half  a  dollar.  “  How 
much  is  the  bottle?  ”  he  said.  “  I  want  to  get  drunk.” 


CHAPTER  XX 


But  a  big  man  cannot  stay  drunk  very  long  on  three 
dollars.  That  was  Sunday  morning,  and  Monday  night 
Jurgis  came  home,  sober  and  sick,  realizing  that  he  had 
spent  every  cent  the  family  owned,  and  had  not  bought  a 
single  instant’s  forgetfulness  with  it. 

Ona  was  not  yet  buried  ;  but  the  police  had  been  noti¬ 
fied,  and  on  the  morrow  they  would  put  the  body  in  a  pine 
coffin  and  take  it  to  the  potter’s  field.  Elzbieta  was  out 
begging  now,  a  few  pennies  from  each  of  the  neighbors,  to 
get  enough  to  pay  for  a  mass  for  her;  and  the  children 
were  upstairs  starving  to  death,  while  he,  good-for-nothing 
rascal,  had  been  spending  their  money  on  drink.  So  spoke 
Aniele,  scornfully,  and  when  he  started  toward  the  fire 
she  added  the  information  that  her  kitchen  was  no  longer 
for  him  to  fill  with  his  phosphate  stinks.  She  had  crowded 
all  her  boarders  into  one  room  on  Ona’s  account,  but  now 
he  could  go  up  in  the  garret  where  he  belonged  —  and  not 
there  much  longer,  either,  if  he  did  not  pay  her  some 
rent. 

Jurgis  went  without  a  word,  and,  stepping  over  half  a 
dozen  sleeping  boarders  in  the  next  room,  ascended  the 
ladder.  It  was  dark  up  above ;  they  could  not  afford  any 
light ;  also  it  was  nearly  as  cold  as  outdoors.  In  a  corner, 
as  far  away  from  the  corpse  as  possible,  sat  Marija,  holding 
little  Antanas  in  her  one  good  arm  and  trying  to  soothe 
him  to  sleep.  In  another  corner  crouched  poor  little 
Juozapas,  wailing  because  he  had  had  nothing  to  eat  all 
day.  Marija  said  not  a  word  to  Jurgis ;  he  crept  in 
like  a  whipped  cur,  and  went  and  sat  down  by  the 
body. 


229 


230 


THE  JUNGLE 


Perhaps  he  ought  to  have  meditated  upon  the  hunger 
of  the  children,  and  upon  his  own  baseness;  but  he 
thought  only  of  Ona,  he  gave  himself  up  again  to  the 
luxury  of  grief.  He  shed  no  tears,  being  ashamed  to 
make  a  sound ;  he  sat  motionless  and  shuddering  with  his 
anguish.  He  had  never  dreamed  how  much  he  loved  Ona, 
until  now  that  she  was  gone ;  until  now  that  he  sat  here, 
knowing  that  on  the  morrow  they  would  take  her  away, 
and  that  he  would  never  lay  eyes  upon  her  again  —  nevei 
all  the  days  of  his  life.  His  old  love,  which  had  been 
starved  to  death,  beaten  to  death,  awoke  in  him  aga^l^f 
the  flood-gates  of  memory  were  lifted —r'lie  saw  all  their 
life  together,  saw  her  as  lie  had  seen  her  in  Lithuania,  the 
first  day  at  the  fair,  beautiful  as  the  flowers,  sing^ing^Ji^e 
a  bird.  He  saw  her  as  he  had  married  her,  with  all  lier  ten¬ 
derness,  with  her  heart  of  wonder ;  the  very  words  she  had 
spoken  seemed  to  ring  now  in  his  ears,  the  tears  she  had 
shed  to  be  wet  upon  his  cheek.  The  long,  cruel  battle  with 
misery  and  hunger  had  hardened  and  embittered  him,  but 
it  had  not  changed  her  —  she  had  been  the  same  hungry 
soul  to  the  end,  stretching  out  her  arms  to  him,  pleading 
with  him,  begging  him  for  love  and  tenderness.  And  she 
had  suffered  —  so  cruelly  she  had  suffered,  such  agonies, 
such  infamies  —  ah,  God,  the  memory  of  them  was  not  to 
be  borne.  What  a  monster  of  wickedness,  of  heartlessness, 
he  had  been  I  Every  angry  word  that  he  had  ever  spoken 
came  back  to  him  and  cut  him  like  a  knife ;  every  selfish 
act  that  he  jiad  done  —  with  what  torments  he  paid  for 
them  now  1  And  such  devotion  and  awe  as  welled  up  in 
his  soul  —  now  that  it  could  never  be  spoken,  now  that  it 
was  too  late,  too  late !  His  bosom  was  choking  with  it, 
bursting  with  it ;  he  crouched  here  in  the  darkness  beside 
her,  stretching  out  his  arms  to  her— and  she  was  gone 
forever,  she  was  dead  I  He  could  have  screamed  aloud 
with  the  horror  and  despair  of  it ;  a  swmat  of  agony  beaded 
his  forehead,  yet  he  dared  not  make  a  sound  —  he  scarcely 
dared  to  breathe,  because  of  his  shame  and  loathing  of 
himself. 

Late  at  night  came  Elzbieta,  having  gotten  the  money 


THE  JUNGLE 


231 


ior  a  mass,  and.  paid  for  it  in  advance,  lest  she  should  be 
tempted  too  sorely  at  home.  She  brought  also  a  bit  of 
stale  rye-bread  that  some  one  had  given  her,  and  with  that 
they  quieted  the  children  and  got  them  to  sleep.  Then 
she  came  over  to  Jurgis  and  sat  down  beside  him. 

She  said  not  a  word  of  reproach  —  she  and  Marija  had 
chosen  that  course  before ;  she  would  only  plead  with 
him,  here  by  the  corpse  of  his  dead  wife.  Already  Elz- 
bieta  had  choked  down  her  tears,  grief  being  crowded  out 
of  her  soul  by  fear.  She  had  to  bury  one  of  her  children 
—  but  then  she  had  done  it  three  times  before,  and  each 
time  risen  up  and  gone  back  to  take  up  the  battle  for  the 
rest.  Elzbieta  was  one  of  the  primitive  creatures :  like  the 
angleworm,  which  goes  on  living  though  cut  in  half ;  like 
a  hen,  which,  deprived  of  her  chickens  one  by  one,  will 
mother  the  last  that  is  left  her.  She  did  this  because  it 
was  her  nature  —  she  asked  no  questions  about  the  justice 
of  it,  nor  the  worthwhileness  of  life  in  which  destruction 
and  death  ran  riot. 

And  this  old  common-sense  view  she  labored  to  impress 
upon  Jurgis,  pleading  with  him  with  tears  in  her  eyes. 
Ona  was  dead,  but  the  others  were  left  and  they  must  be 
saved.  She  did  not  ask  for  her  own  children.  She  and 
Marija  could  care  for  them  somehow,  but  there  was  Anta- 
oas,  his  own  son.  Ona  had  given  Antanas  to  him  —  the 
little  fellow  was  the  only  remembrance  of  her  that  he  had , 
he  must  treasure  it  and  protect  it,  he  must  show  himself 
a  man.  He  knew  what  Ona  would  have  had  him  do, 
what  she  would  ask  of  him  at  this  moment,  if  she  could 
speak  to  him.  It  was  a  terrible  thing  that  she  should  have 
died  as  she  had  ;  but  the  life  had  been  too  hard  for  her, 
and  she  iiad  to  go.  It  was  terrible  that  they  were  not 
able  to  bury  her,  that  he  could  not  even  have  a  day  to 
mourn  her  —  but  so  it  was.  Their  fate  was  pressing  ; 
they  had  not  a  cent,  and  the  children  would  perish — some 
money  must  be  had.  Could  he  not  be  a  man  for  Ona’s 
sake,  and  pull  himself  together?  In  a  little  while  they 
would  be  out  of  danger  —  now  that  they  had  given  up 
the  house  they  could  live  more  cheaply,  and  with  all  the 


232 


THE  JUNGLE 


children  working  they  could  get  along,  if  only  he  would 
not  go  to  pieces.  So  Elzbieta  went  on,  with  feverish  in¬ 
tensity.  It  was  a  struggle  for  life  with  her  ;  she  was  not 
afraid  that  Jurgis  would  go  on  drinking,  for  he  had  no 
money  for  that,  but  she  was  wild  with  dread  at  the  thought 
that  he  might  desert  them,  might  take  to  the  road,  as  Jonas 
bad  done. 

Bat  with  Ona’s  dead  body  beneath  his  eyes,  Jurgis  could 
not  well  think  of  treason  to  his  child.  Yes,  he  said,  he 
would  try,  for  the  sake  of  Antanas.  He  would  give  the 
little  fellow  his  chance  - —  would  get  to  work  at  once,  yes, 
to-morrow,  without  even  waiting  for  Ona  to  be  buried. 
They  might  trust  him,  he  would  keep  his  word,  come  what 
might. 

And  so  he  was  out  before  daylight  the  next  morning, 
headache,  heartache,  and  all.  He  went  straight  to  Gra¬ 
ham’s  fertilizer-mill,  to  see  if  he  could  get  back  his  job. 
But  the  boss  shook  his  head  when  he  saw  him  —  no,  his 
place  had  been  filled  long  ago,  and  there  was  no  room  for 
liim. 

“  Do  you  think  there  will  be  ?  ”  Jurgis  asked.  “  I  may 
have  to  wait.” 

“No,”  said  the  other,  “  it  will  not  be  worth  your  while 
to  wait  —  there  will  be  nothing  for  you  here.” 

Jurgis  stood  gazing  at  him  in  perplexity.  “  What  is  the 
matter  ?  ”  he  asked.  “  Didn’t  I  do  my  work  ?  ” 

The  other  met  his  look  with  one  of  cold  indifference, 
and  answered,  “There  will  be  nothing  for  you  here,  I 
said.” 

Jurgis  had  his  suspicions  as  to  the  dreadful  meaning  of 
that  incident,  and  he  went  away  with  a  sinking  at  the 
heart.  He  went  and  took  his  stand  with  the  mob  of  hun¬ 
gry  wretches  who  were  standing  about  in  the  snow  before 
the  time-station.  Here  he  stayed,  breakfastless,  for  two 
hours,  until  the  throng  was  driven  away  by  the  clubs  of 
the  police.  There  was  no  work  for  him  that  day. 

Jurgis  had  made  a  good  many  acquaintances  in  his  long 
services  at  the  yards — there  were  saloon-keepers  who  would 
trust  him  for  a  drink  and  a  sandwich,  and  members  of  his 


THE  JUNGLE 


233 


old  union  who  would  lend  him  a  dime  at  a  pinch.  It  was 
not  a  question  of  life  and  death  for  him,  therefore;  he  might 
hunt  all  day,  and  come  again  on  the  morrow,  and  try  hang- 
ing  on  thus  for  weeks,  like  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
others.  Meantime,  Teta  Elzbieta  would  go  and  beg,  over 
in  the  Hyde  Park  district,  and  the  children  would  bring 
home  enough  to  pacify  Aniele,  and  keep  them  all  alive. 

It  was  at  the  end  of  a  week  of  this  sort  of  waiting, 
roaming  about  in  the  bitter  winds  or  loafing  in  saloons, 
that  Jurgis  stumbled  on  a  chance  in  one  of  the  cellars  of 
Jones’s  big  packing  plant.  He  saw  a  foreman  passing  the 
open  doorway,  and  hailed  him  for  a  job. 

“  Push  a  truck  ?  ”  inquired  the  man,  and  Jurgis  an¬ 
swered,  “Yes,  sirl”  before  the  words  were  well  out  of 
his  mouth. 

“  What’s  your  name  ?  ”  demanded  the  other. 

“Jurgis  Rudkus.” 

“  Worked  in  the  yards  before  ?  ** 

“  Yes.” 

“  Whereabouts  ?  ” 

“  Two  places,  —  Brown’s  killing-beds  and  Durham’s 
fertilizer-mill.” 

“  Why  did  you  leave  there  ?  ” 

“  The  first  time  I  had  an  accident,  and  the  last  time  I 
was  sent  up  for  a  month.” 

“I  see.  Well,  Pll  give  you  a  trial.  Come  early  to¬ 
morrow  and  ask  for  Mr.  Thomas.” 

So  Jurgis  rushed  home  with  the  wild  tidings  that  he 
had  a  job  —  that  the  terrible  siege  was  over.  The  rem¬ 
nants  of  the  family  had  quite  a  celebration  that  night; 
and  in  the  morning  Jurgis  was  at  the  place  half  an  hour 
before  the  time  of  opening.  The  foreman  came  in  shortly 
afterward,  and  when  he  saw  Jurgis  he  frowned. 

“  Oh,”  he  said,  “  I  promised  you  a  job,  didn’t  I  ?” 

“Yes,  sir,”  said  Jurgis. 

“Well.  I’m  sorry,  but  I  made  a  mistake.  I  can’t  use 
you." 

Jurgis  stared,  dumfounded,  “What’s  the  matter?”  he 
gasped. 

IG 


234 


THE  JUNGLE 


4 


Nothing,”  said  the  man,  “  only  I  can’t  use  you.” 

There  was  the  same  cold,  hostile  stare  that  he  had  had 
from  the  boss  of  the  fertilizer-mill.  He  knew  that  there 
was  no  use  in  saying  a  word,  and  he  turned  and  went 
away. 

Out  in  the  saloons  the  men  could  tell  him  all  about  the 
meaning  of  it ;  they  gazed  at  him  with  pitying  eyes  — 
poor  devil,  he  was  blacklisted  1  What  had  he  done  ? 
they  asked  —  knocked  down  his  boss?  Good  heavens, 
then  he  might  have  known  I  Why,  he  siood  as  much 
chance  of  getting  a  job  in  Packingtown  as  of  being  chosen 
mayor  of  Chicago.  Why  had  he  wasted  his  time  hunt¬ 
ing  ?  They  had  him  on  a  secret  list  in  every  office,  big 
and  little,  in  the  place.  They  had  his  name  by  this  time 
in  St.  Louis  and  New  York,  in  Omaha  and  Boston,  in 
Kansas  City  and  St.  Joseph.  He  was  condemned  and 
sentenced,  without  trial  and  without  appeal ;  he  could 
never  work  for  the  packers  again  —  he  could  not  even 
clean  cattle-pens  or  drive  a  truck  in  any  place  where  they 
controlled.  He  might  try  it,  if  he  chose,  as  hundreds  had 
tried  it,  and  found  out  for  themselves.  He  would  never 
be  told  anything  about  it ;  he  would  never  get  any  more 
satisfaction  than  he  had  gotten  just  now  ;  but  he  would 
always  find  when  the  time  came  that  he  was  not  needed. 
It  would  not  do  for  him  to  give  any  other  name,  either  — 
they  had  company  “spotters”  for  just  that  purpose,  and 
he  wci'idn’t  keep  a  job  in  Packingtown  three  daj's.  It 
was  worth  a  fortune  to  the  packers  to  keep  their  black¬ 
list  effective,  as  a  warning  to  the  men  and  a  means  of 
keeping  down  union  agitation  and  political  discontent. 

Jurgis  went  home,  carrying  these  new  tidings  to  the 
family  council.  It  was  a  most  cruel  thing  ;  here  ii?  this 
district  was  his  home,  such  as  it  was,  the  place  he  was  used 
to  and  the  friends  he  knew-— and  now  every  possibility  of 
employment  in  it  was  closed  to  him.  There  was  nothing 
in  Packingtown  but  packing-houses  ;  and  so  it  was  the 
same  thing  as  evicting  him  from  his  home. 

He  and  the  two  women  spent  all  day  and  half  the  night 
discussing  it.  It  would  be  convenient,  down-town,  to  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


235 


children’s  place  ot  work;  but  then  Marija  was  on  the 
road  to  recovery,  and  had  hopes  of  getting  a  job  in 
the  yards;  and  though  she  did  not  see  her  old-time  lover 
once  a  month,  because  of  the  misery  of  their  state,  yet  she 
could  not  make  up  her  mind  to  go  away  and  give  him  up 
forever.  Then,  too,  Elzbieta  had  heard  ?'omething  about 
ft  chance  to  scrub  floors  in  Durham’s  offices,  and  was 
waiting  every  day  for  word.  In  the  end  it  was  decided 
that  J urgis  should  go  down-town  to  strike  out  for  himself, 
and  they  would  decide  after  he  got  a  job.  As  there  was 
uo  one  from  whom  he  could  borrow  there,  and  he  dared 
not  beg  for  fear  of  being  arrested,  it  was  arranged  that 
every  day  he  should  meet  one  of  the  children  and  be  given 
fifteen  cents  of  their  earnings,  upon  which  he  could  keep 
going.  Then  all  day  he  was  to  pace  the  streets  with 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  other  homeless  wretches,  inquir¬ 
ing  at  stores,  warehouses,  and  factories  for  a  chance  ;  and 
at  night  he  was  to  crawl  into  some  doorway  or  underneath 
a  truck,  and  hide  there  until  midnight,  w'hen  he  might  get 
into  one  of  the  station-houses,  and  spread  a  newspaper 
upon  the  floor,  and  lie  down  in  the  midst  of  a  throng  of 
bums  ”  and  beggars,  reeking  with  alcohol  and  tobacco, 
and  filthy  with  vermin  and  disease. 

So  for  two  weeks  more  Jurgis  fought  with  the  demon 
of  despair.  Once  he  got  a  chance  to  load  a  truck  for  half 
a  day,  and  again  he  carried  an  old  w'oman’s  valise  and  was 
given  a  quarter.  This  let  him  into  a  lodging-house  on 
several  nights  when  he  might  otherwise  have  frozen  to 
death  ;  and  it  also  gave  him  a  chance  now  and  then  to 
buy  a  newspaper  in  the  morning  and  hunt  up  jobs  while 
his  rivals  were  watching  and  waiting  for  a  paper  to  be 
thrown  away.  This,  however,  was  really  not  the  advau- 
tage  it  seemed,  for  the  newspaper  advertisements  were  a 
cause  of  much  loss  of  precious  time  and  of  many  weary 
joiirneys  A  full  half  of  these  were  “  fakes,”  put  in  by 
the  endless  variety  of  establishments  which  preyed  upon 
the  helpless  ignorance  of  the  unemployed.  If  Jurgis  lost 
onlv  his  time,  it  was  because  he  had  nothing  else  to  lose 


236 


THE  JHNGLJS 


whenever  a  smooth-tongued  agent  would  tell  him  of  the 
wonderful  positions  he  had  on  hand,  he  could  only  shake 
his  head  sorrowfully  and  say  that  he  had  not  the  necessary 
dollar  to  deposit ;  when  it  was  explained  to  him  what 
“  big  money  ”  he  and  aU  his  family  could  make  by  color¬ 
ing  photographs,  he  could  only  promise  to  come  in  again 
when  he  had  two  dollars  to  invest  in  the  outfit. 

In  the  end  Jurgis  got  a  chance  through  an  accidental 
meeting  with  an  old-time  acquaintance  of  his  union  days. 
He  met  this  man  on  his  way  to  work  in  the  giant  factories 
of  the  Harvester  Trust ;  and  his  friend  told  him  to  come 
along  and  he  would  speak  a  good  word  for  him  to  his 
boss,  whom  he  knew  well.  So  Jurgis  trudged  four  or  five 
miles,  and  passed  through  a  waiting  throng  of  unemployed 
at  the  gate  under  the  escort  of  his  friend.  His  knees 
nearly  gave  way  beneath  him  when  the  foreman,  after 
looking  him  over  and  questioning  him,  told  him  that  he 
could  find  an  opening  for  him. 

How  much  this  accident  meant  to  Jurgis  he  realized 
only  by  stages  ;  for  he  found  that  the  harvester- works 
were  the  sort  of  place  to  which  philanthropists  and 
reformers  pointed  with  pride.  It  had  some  thought  for 
its  employees ;  its  workshops  were  big  and  roomy,  it  pro¬ 
vided  a  restaurant  where  the  workmen  could  buy  good 
food  at  cost,  it  had  even  a  reading-room,  and  decent  places 
where  its  girl-hands  could  rest ;  also  the  work  was  free 
from  many  of  the  elements  of  filth  and  repulsiveness  that 
prevailed  at  the  stockyards.  Day  after  day  Jurgis  dis¬ 
covered  these  things  —  things  never  expected  nor  dreamed 
of  by  him  —  until  this  new  place  came  to  seem  a  kind  of  a 
heaven  to  him. 

It  was  an  enormous  establishment,  covering  a  hundred 
and  sixty  acres  of  ground,  employing  five  thousand  people, 
and  turning  out  over  three  hundred  thousand  machines 
every  year — a  good  part  of  all  the  harvesting  and  mow¬ 
ing  machines  used  in  the  country.  Jurgis  saw  very  little 
of  it,  of  course  —  it  was  all  specialized  work,  the  same  as 
at  the  stockyards  ;  each  one  of  the  hundreds  of  parts  of 
a  mowing-machine  was  made  separately,  and  sometimes 


THE  JUNGLE 


237 


bandied  by  hundreds  of  men.  Where  Jurgis  worked  there 
was  a  machine  which  cut  and  stamped  a  certain  piece  of 
steel  about  two  square  inches  in  size;  the  pieces  came 
tumbling  out  upon  a  tray,  and  all  that  human  hands  had 
to  do  was  to  pile  them  in  regular  rows,  and  change  the 
trays  at  intervals.  This  was  done  by  a  single  boy,  who 
stood  with  eyes  and  thought  centred  upon  it,  and  fingers 
flying  so  fast  that  the  sounds  of  the  bits  of  steel  striking 
upon  each  other  was  like  the  music  of  an  express  train  as 
one  hears  it  in  a  sleeping-car  at  night.  Tliis  was  “piece¬ 
work,”  of  course  ;  and  besides  it  was  made  certain  that 
the  boy  did  not  idle,  by  setting  the  machine  to  match  the 
highest  possible  speed  of  human  hands.  Thirty  thousand 
of  these  pieces  he  handled  every  day,  nine  or  ten  mil¬ 
lions  every  year  —  how  many  in  a  lifetime  it  rested  with 
the  gods  to  say.  N  ear  by  him  men  sat  bending  over  whirl¬ 
ing  grindstones,  putting  the  finishing  touches  to  the  steel 
knives  of  the  reaper;  picking  them  out  of  a  basket  with 
the  right  hand,  pressing  first  one  side  and  then  the  other 
against  the  stone  and  finally  dropping  them  with  the  left 
hand  into  another  basket.  One  of  these  men  told  Jurgis 
that  he  had  sharpened  three  thousand  pieces  of  steel  a  day 
for  thirteen  years.  In  the  next  room  were  wonderful  ma¬ 
chines  that  ate  up  long  steel  rods  by  slow  stages,  cutting 
them  off,  seizing  the  pieces,  stamping  heads  upon  them, 
grinding  them  and  polishing  them,  tiireading  them,  and 
finally  dropping  them  into  a  basket,  all  ready  to  bolt  the 
harvesters  together.  From  yet  another  machine  came 
tens  of  thousands  of  steel  burs  to  fit  upon  these  bolts. 
In  other  places  all  these  various  parts  were  dipped  into 
troughs  of  paint  and  hung  up  to  dry,  and  then  slid  along 
on  trolleys  to  a  room  where  men  streaked  them  with  red 
and  yellow,  so  that  they  might  look  cheerful  in  the  har¬ 
vest-fields. 

Jurgis’s  friend  worked  upstairs  in  the  casting-rooms, 
and  his  task  was  to  make  the  moulds  of  a  certain  part. 
He  shovelled  black  sand  into  an  iron  receptacle  and 

Eounded  it  tight  and  set  it  aside  to  harden ;  then  it  would 
e  taken  out,  and  molten  iron  poured  into  it.  This  man, 


238 


THE  JUl^GLE 


tooj  was  paid  oy  the  mould  —  or  rather  for  perfect  cast 
ings,  nearly  half  his  work  going  for  naught.  You  might 
see  him,  along  with  dozens  of  others,  toiling  like  one  pos¬ 
sessed  by  a  whole  community  of  demons  |  his  arras  work¬ 
ing  like  the  driving  rods  of  an  engine,  his  long,  black  hair 
flying  wild,  his  eyes  starting  out,  the  sweat  rolling  in 
rivers  down  his  face.  When  he  had  shovelled  the  mould 
full  of  sand,  and  reached  for  the  pounder  to  pound  it  with, 
it  was  after  the  manner  of  a  canoeist  running  rapids  and 
seizing  a  pole  at  sight  of  a  submerged  rock.  All  day  long 
this  man  would  toil  thus,  his  whole  being  centred  upon 
the  purpose  of  making  twenty-three  instead  of  twenty- 
two  and  a  half  cents  an  hour;  and  then  his  product 
would  be  reckoned  up  by  the  census-taker,  and  jubilant 
captains  of  industry  would  boast  of  it  in  their  banquet- 
halls,  telling  how  our  vorkers  are  nearly  twice  as  efficient 
as  those  of  any  other  country.  If  we  are  the  greatest 
nation  the  sun  ever  shone  upon,  it  would  seem  to  be 
mainly  because  we  have  been  able  to  goad  our  wage- 
earners  to  this  pitch  of  frenzy;  though  there  are  a  few 
other  things  that  are  great  among  us,  including  our  drink 
bill,  which  is  a  billion  and  a  quarter  of  dollars  a  year,  and 
doubling  itself  every  decade. 

There  was  a  machine  which  stamped  out  the  iron  plates, 
and  then  another  which,  with  a  mighty  thud,  mashed  them 
to  the  shape  of  the  sitting-down  portion  of  the  American 
farmer.  Then  they  were  piled  upon  a  truck,  and  it  was 
Jurgis's  task  to  wheel  them  to  the  room  where  the 
machines  were  “assembled.”  This  was  child’s  play  for 
him,  and  he  got  a  dollar  and  seventy  rive  cents  a  day  for 
it ;  on  Saturday  he  paid  Aniele  the  seventy-five  cents  a 
week  he  owed  her  for  the  use  of  her  garret,  and  also  re¬ 
deemed  his  overcoat,  which  Elzbieta  had  put  in  pawn 
when  he  was  in  jail. 

This  last  was  a  gi’eat  blessing,  A  man  csnnoiD  go  about 
in  midwinter  in  Chicago  with  no  overcoat  and  not  pay 
for  it,  and  Jurgis  bad  to  walk  or  ride  five  or  six  miles 
hack  and  forth  to  his  work.  It  so  happened  that  hall 


THE  JUNGLE 


239 


of  this  was  in  one  direction  and  half  in  another,  neces¬ 
sitating  a  change  of  cars ;  the  law  required  that  transfers 
be  given  at  all  intersecting  points,  but  the  railway  corpo¬ 
ration  had  gotten  round  this  by  arranging  a  pretence  at 
separate  ownership.  So  whenever  he  wished  to  ride,  ho 
had  to  pay  ten  cents  each  way,  or  over  ten  per  cent  of  his 
income  to  this  power,  which  had  gotten  its  franchises  long 
ago  by  buying  up  the  city  council,  in  the  face  of  popular 
clamor  amounting  almost  to  a  rebellion.  Tiiod  as  he 
felt  at  night,  and  dark  and  bitter  cold  as  it  was  in  the 
morning,  Jurgis  generally  chose  to  walk;  at  the  hours 
other  workmen  were  travelling,  the  street-car  monopoly 
saw  fit  to  put  on  so  few  cars  that  there  would  be  men 
hanging  to  every  foot  of  the  backs  of  them  and  often 
crouching  upon  the  snow-covered  roof.  Of  course  the 
doors  could  never  be  closed,  and  so  the  cars  were  as  cold 
as  outdoors;  Jurgis,  like  many  others,  found  it  better  to 
spend  his  fare  for  a  drink  and  a  free  lunch,  to  give  him 
strength  to  Avalk. 

These,  however,  were  all  slight  matters  to  a  man  who 
had  escaped  from  Durham’s  fertilizer-mill.  Jurgis  be- 
gan  to  pick  up  heart  again  and  to  make  plans.  He  had 
lost  his  house,  but  then  the  awful  load  of  the  rent  and 
interest  was  oif  his  shoulders,  and  when  Marija  was  well 
again  they  could  start  over  and  save.  In  the  shop  where 
he  worked  was  a  man,  a  Lithuanian  like  himself,  whom 
the  others  spoke  of  in  admiring  whispers,  because  of  the 
mighty  feats  he  was  performing.  All  day  lie  sat  at  a 
machine  turning  bolts;  and  then  in  the  evening  he  went 
to  the  public  school  to  study  English  and  learn  to  read. 
In  addition,  because  he  had  a  family  of  eight  children  to 
support  and  his  earnings  were  not  enough,  on  Saturdays 
and  Sundays  he  served  as  a  watchman ;  he  was  required 
to  press  two  buttons  at  opposite  ends  of  a  building  every 
five  minutes,  and  as  the  walk  only  took  him  two  minutes, 
he  had  three  minutes  to  study  between  each  trip.  Jurgis 
felt  jealous  of  this  fellow ;  for  that  was  the  sort  of  thing 
he  himself  had  dreamed  of,  two  or  three  years  ago.  Ha 
auffht  do  it  even  yet.  if  he  had  a  fair  chance —  he  might 


240 


THE  OUNGLE 


attract  attention  and  become  a  skilled  man  or  a  boss,  as 
some  had  done  in  this  place.  Suppose  that  Marija  could 
get  a  job  in  the  big  mill  where  they  made  binder-twine  -- 
then  they  would  move  into  this  neighborhood,  and  he 
would  really  have  a  chance.  With  a  hope  like  that, 
there  was  some  use  in  living ;  to  find  a  place  vt^here  you 
were  treated  like  a  human  being  —  by  God  !  he  would 
show  them  how  he  could  appreciate  it.  He  laughed  to 
himself  as  he  thought  how  he  would  hang  on  to  this 
job  I 

And  then  one  afternoon,  the  ninth  of  his  work  in  the 
place,  when  he  went  to  get  his  overcoat  he  saw  a  group 
of  men  crowded  before  a  placard  on  the  door,  and  when 
he  went  over  and  asked  what  it  was,  they  told  him  that 
beginning  with  the  morrow  his  department  of  the  harvester 
works  would  be  closed  until  further  notice  I 


11? 


CHAPTER  XXI 


That  was  the  way  they  did  it!  There  was  not  half  an 
tiour's  warning  —  the  works  were  closed!  It  had  hap¬ 
pened  that  way  before,  said  the  men,  and  it  would  happen 
that  way  forever.  They  had  made  all  the  harvesting-ma¬ 
chines  that  the  world  needed,  and  now  they  had  to  wait 
till  some  wore  out!  It  was  nobody’s  fault — -that  was  the 
way  of  it;  and  thousands  of  men  and  women  were  turned 
out  in  the  dead  of  winter,  to  live  upon  their  savings  if  they 
had  any,  and  otherwise  to  die.  So  many  tens  of  thousands 
already  in  the  city,  homeless  and  begging  for  work,  and 
now  several  thousand  more  added  to  them  1 

Jurgis  walked  home  with  his  pittance  of  pay  in  his 
pocket,  heartbroken,  overwhelmed.  One  more  bandage 
had  been  torn  from  his  eyes,  one  more  pitfall  was  revealed 
to  him!  Of  what  help  was  kindness  and  decency  on  the 
part  of  employers  —  when  they  could  not  keep  a  job  for 
him,  when  there  were  more  harvesting-machines  made 
than  the  world  "^as  able  to  buy  1  What  a  hellish  mockery 
it  was,  anyway,  that  a  man  should  slave  to  make  harvest¬ 
ing-machines  for  the  country,  only  to  be  turned  out  to 
starve  for  doing  his  duty  too  well ! 

It  took  him  two  days  to  get  over  this  heart-sickening 
disappointment.  He  did  not  drink  anything,  because 
Elzbieta  got  his  money  for  safekeeping,  and  knew  him  too 
well  to  be  in  the  least  frightened  by  his  angry  demands. 
He  stayed  up  in  the  garret,  however,  and  sulked  —  what 
was  the  use  of  a  man’s  hunting  a  job  when  it  was  taken 
from  him  before  he  had  time  to  learn  the  work?  But 
then  their  money  was  going  again,  and  little  Antanas  was 
hungry,  and  crying  with  the  bitter  cold  of  the  garret 

241 


242 


THE  JUNGLE 


Also  Madame  Haupt,  the  midwife,  was  after  him  for  some 
money.  So  he  went  out  once  more. 

For  another  ten  days  he  roamed  the  streets  and  alleys 
of  the  liuge  city,  sick  and  hungry,  begging  for  any  work. 
He  tried  in  stores  and  offices,  in  restaurants  and  hotels, 
along  the  docks  and  in  the  railroad-yards,  in  warehouses 
and  mills  and  factories  where  they  made  products  that 
went  to  every  corner  of  the  world.  There  were  often 
one  or  two  chances  —  but  there  were  always  a  hundred 
men  for  every  chance,  and  his  turn  would  not  come.  At 
night  he  crept  into  sheds  and  cellars  and  doorways  —  until 
there  came  a  spell  of  belated  winter  weather,  with  a  raging 
gale,  and  the  thermometer  five  degrees  below  zero  at  sun¬ 
down  and  falling  all  night.  Then  Jurgis  fought  like 
a  wild  beast  to  get  into  the  big  Harrison  Street  police-sta¬ 
tion,  and  slept  down  in  a  corridor,  crowded  with  two  other 
men  upon  a  single  step. 

He  had  to  fight  often  in  these  days  —  to  fight  for  a  place 
near  the  factory  gates,  and  now  and  again  with  gangs  on 
the  street.  He  found,  for  instance,  that  the  business  of 
carrying  satchels  for  railroad-passengers  was  a  preempted 
one  —  whenever  he  essayed  it,  eight  or  ten  men  and  boys 
would  fall  upon  him  and  force  him  to  run  for  his  life 
They  always  had  the  policeman  “  squared,”  and  so  there 
was  no  use  in  expecting  protection. 

That  Jurgis  did  not  starve  to  death  was  due  solely  to 
the  pittance  the  children  brought  him.  And  even  this  was 
never  certain.  For  one  thing  the  cold  was  almost  more 
than  the  children  could  bear  ;  and  then  they,  too,  were  in 
perpetual  peril  from  rivals  who  plundered  and  beat  them. 
The  law  was  against  them,  too  —  little  Vilimas,  who  was 
really  eleven,  but  did  not  look  to  be  eight,  was  stopped  on 
the  streets  by  a  severe  old  lady  in  spectacles,  who  told  him 
that  he  was  too  young  to  be  working  and  that  if  he  did 
not  stop  selling  papers  she  would  send  a  truant-officer  after 
him.  Also  one  night  a  strange  man  caught  little  Kotrina 
by  the  arm  and  tried  to  persuade  her  into  a  dark  cellar¬ 
way,  an  experience  which  filled  her  with  such  terror  that 
she  was  hardly  to  be  kept  at  work. 


THE  JUNGLE 


At  last,  on  a  Sunday,  as  there  v?as  no  use  looking  lor 
work,  Jurgis  went  home  by  stealing  rides  on  the  cars. 
He  found  that  they  had  been  waiting  for  him  for  three 
days  —  there  was  a  chance  of  a  job  for  him. 

It  was  quite  a  story.  I/ittle  Jnozapas,  who  was  near 
crazy  with  hunger  these  days,  had  gone  out  on  the  street 
to  beg  for  himself.  Juozapas  had  only  one  leg,  having 
been  run  over  by  a  wagon  when  a  little  child,  but  ho  had 
got  himself  a  broomstick,  which  he  put  under  his  arm  for  a 
crutch.  He  had  fallen  in  with  some  other  children  and 
found  the  way  to  Mike  Scully’s  dump,  which  lay  three 
or  four  blocks  away.  To  this  place  there  came  every  day 
many  hundreds  of  wagon-loads  of  garbage  and  trash  from 
the  lake-front,  where  the  rich  people  lived;  and  in  the 
heaps  the  children  raked  for  food  —  there  were  hunks  of 
bread  and  potato  peelings  and  apple-cores  and  meat- 
bones,  all  of  it  half  frozen  and  quite  unspoiled.  Little 
Juozapas  gorged  himself,  and  came  home  with  a  newspaper 
full,  which  he  was  feeding  to  Antanas  when  his  mother 
came  in.  Elzbieta  was  horrified,  for  she  did  not  believe 
that  the  food  out  of  the  dumps  was  fit  to  eat.  The  next 
dajq  however,  when  no  harm  came  of  it  and  Juozapas  be¬ 
gan  to  cry  with  hunger,  she  gave  in  and  said  that  he  might 
go  again.  And  that  afternoon  he  came  home  witli  a  story 
of  liow  while  he  had  been  digging  away  with  a  stick,  a 
lady  upon  the  street  had  called  him.  A  real  fine  lady,  the 
little  boy  explained,  a  beautiful  lady;  and  she  wanted  to 
know  all  about  him,  and  whether  he  got  the  garbage  for 
chickens,  and  why  he  v’alked  with  a  broomstick,  and  why 
Ona  had  died,  and  how  Jurgis  had  come  to  go  to  jail,  and 
what  was  the  matter  with  Marija,  and  everything.  In 
the  end  she  had  asked  where  he  lived,  and  said  that  she 
was  coming  to  see  him,  and  bring  him  a  new  crutch  to 
walk  with.  She  had  on  a  hat  with  a  bird  upon  it, 
Juozapas  added,  and  a  long  fur  snake  around  her  neck. 

She  really  came,  the  very  next  morning,  and  climbed  the 
ladder  to  the  garret,  and  stood  and  stared  about  her,  turn  ■ 
ing  pale  at  the  sight  of  the  blood  stains  on  the  floor  where 
Ona  had  died.  She  was  a  “  settlement-worker,”  she  ex 


244 


THE  JUNGLE 


plained  to  Elzbieta — she  lived  around  on  Ashland  Avenue. 
Elzbieta  knew  the  place,  over  a  feed-store;  somebody  had 
wanted  her  to  go  there,  but  she  had  not  cared  to,  for  she 
thought  that  it  must  have  something  to  do  with  religion, 
and  the  priest  did  not  like  her  to  have  anything  to  do  with 
strange  religions.  They  were  rich  people  who  came  to 
live  there  to  find  out  about  the  poor  people;  but  what 
good  they  expected  it  would  do  them  to  know,  one  could 
not  imagine.  So  spoke  Elzbieta,  naively,  and  the  young 
lady  laughed  and  was  rather  at  a  loss  for  an  answer  —  she 
stood  and  gazed  about  her,  and  thought  of  a  cynical 
remark  that  had  been  made  to  her,  that  she  was  standing 
upon  the  brink  of  the  pit  of  hell  and  throwing  in  snow¬ 
balls  to  lower  the  temperature. 

Elzbieta  was  glad  to  have  somebody  to  listen,  and  she 
told  all  their  woes,  —  what  had  happened  to  Ona,  and  the 
jail,  and  the  loss  of  their  home,  and  Marija’s  accident,  and 
how  Ona  bad  died,  and  how  Jurgis  could  get  no  work. 
As  she  listened  the  pretty  young  lady’s  eyes  filled  with 
tears,  and  in  the  midst  of  it  she  burst  into  weeping  and 
hid  her  face  on  Elzbieta’s  shoulder,  quite  regardless  of  the 
fact  that  the  woman  had  on  a  dirty  old  wrapper  and  that 
the  garret  was  full  of  fleas.  Poor  Elzbieta  was  ashamed 
of  herself  for  having  told  so  woful  a  tale,  and  the  other 
had  to  beg  and  plead  with  her  to  get  her  to  go  on.  The 
end  of  it  was  that  the  young  lady  sent  them  a  basket  of 
things  to  eat,  and  left  a  letter  that  Jurgis  was  to  take  to  a 
gentleman  who  was  superintendent  in  one  of  the  mills  of 
the  great  steel-works  in  South  Chicago.  “  He  will  get 
Jurgis  something  to  do,”  the  young  lady  had  said,  and 
added,  smiling  through  her  tears — “  If  he  doesn’t,  he  will 
never  marry  me.” 

The  steel- works  were  fifteen  miles  away,  and  as  usual  it 
was  so  contrived  that  one  had  to  pay  two  fares  to  get  there. 
Far  and  wide  the  sky  was  flaring  with  the  red  glare  that 
leaped  from  rows  of  towering  chimneys  —  for  it  was  pitch 
dark  when  Jurgis  arrived.  The  vast  works,  a  city  in 
themselves,  were  surrounded  by  a  stockade  ;  and  already 


THE  JUNGLE 


24d 


a  full  hundred  men  were  waiting  at  the  gate  where  new 
hands  were  taken  on.  Soon  after  daybreak  whistles  began 
to  blow,  and  then  suddenly  thousands  of  men  appeared, 
streaming  from  saloons  and  boarding-houses  across  the 
way,  leaping  from  trolley-cars  that  passed  —  it  seemed  as 
if  they  rose  out  of  the  ground,  in  the  dim  gray  light.  A 
river  of  them  poured  in  through  the  gate  —  and  then 
gradually  ebbed  away  again,  until  there  were  only  a  few 
late  ones  running,  and  the  watchman  pacing  up  and  down, 
and  the  hungry  strangers  stamping  and  shivering. 

Jurgis  presented  his  precious  letter.  The  gatekeeper 
was  surly,  and  put  him  through  a  catechism,  but  he  in¬ 
sisted  that  he  knew  nothing,  and  as  he  had  taken  the 
precaution  to  seal  his  letter,  there  was  nothing  for  the 
gatekeeper  to  do  but  send  it  to  the  person  to  whom  it  was 
addressed.  A  messenger  came  back  to  say  that  Jurgis 
should  wait,  and  so  he  came  inside  of  the  gate,  perhaps 
not  sorry  enough  that  there  were  others  less  fortunate 
watching  him  with  greedy  eyes. 

The  great  mills  were  getting  under  way  —  one  could 
hear  a  vast  stirring,  a  rolling  and  rumbling  and  hammer¬ 
ing.  Little  by  little  the  scene  grew  plain:  towering, 
black  buildings  here  and  there,  long  rows  of  shops  and 
sheds,  little  railways  branching  ever3'^where,  bare  gray 
cinders  under  foot  and  oceans  of  billowing  black  smoke 
above.  On  one  side  of  the  grounds  ran  a  railroad  with  a 
dozen  tracks,  and  on  the  other  side  lay  the  lake,  where 
steamers  came  to  load. 

Jurgis  had  time  enough  to  stare  and  speculate,  for  it 
was  two  hours  before  he  was  summoned.  He  went  into 
the  office-building,  where  a  company  time-keeper  inter¬ 
viewed  him.  The  superintendent  was  busy,  he  said,  but 
he  (the  time-keeper)  would  try  to  find  Jurgis  a  job.  He 
had  never  worked  in  a  steel-mill  before  ?  But  he  was 
ready  for  anything  ?  Well,  then,  they  would  go  and  see. 

So  they  began  a  tour,  among  sights  that  made  Jurgis 
stare  amazed.  He  wondered  if  ever  he  could  get  used  to 
working  in  a  place  like  this,  where  the  air  shook  Avith 
deafening  thunder,  and  whistles  shrieked  warnings  on  all 


246 


THE  JUNGLE 


sides  of  him  at  once  ;  where  miniature  steam-engines  camo 
rushing  upon  him,  and  sizzling,  quivering,  white-hot 
masses  of  metal  sped  past  him,  and  explosions  of  fire  and 
flaming  sparks  dazzled  him  and  scorched  his  face.  The 
men  in  these  mills  were  all  black  with  soot,  and  hollow- 
eyed  and  gaunt;  they  worked  with  fierce  intensity,  rush¬ 
ing  here  and  there,  and  never  lifting  their  eyes  from 
their  tasks.  Jurgis  clung  to  his  guide  like  a  scared  child 
to  its  nurse,  and  while  the  latter  hailed  one  foreman  after 
another  to  ask  if  they  could  use  another  unskilled  man, 
he  stared  about  him  and  marvelled. 

He  was  taken  to  the  Bessemer  furnace,  where  they 
made  billets  of  steel  —  a  dome-like  building  the  size  of  a 
big  theatre.  Jurgis  stood  where  the  balcony  of  the  theatre 
would  have  been,  and  opposite,  by  the  stage,  he  saw  three 
giant  caldrons,  big  enough  for  all  the  devils  of  hell  to 
brew  their  broth  in,  full  of  something  white  and  blinding, 
bubbling  and  splashing,  roaring  as  if  volcanoes  were  blow¬ 
ing  through  it  —  one  had  to  sliout  to  be  heard  in  the  place. 
Liquid  fire  would  leap  from  these  caldrons  and  scatter 
like  bombs  below  —  and  men  were  working  there,  seem¬ 
ing  careless,  so  that  Jurgis  caught  his  breath  with  fright. 
Then  a  whistle  would  toot,  and  across  the  curtain  of  the 
theatre  would  come  a  little  engine  with  a  car-load  of  some¬ 
thing  to  be  dumped  into  one  of  the  receptacles ;  and  then 
another  whistle  would  toot,  down  by  the  stage,  and  an¬ 
other  train  would  back  up  —  and  suddenly,  without  an 
instant's  warning,  one  of  the  giant  kettles  began  to  tilt 
and  topple,  flinging  out  a  jet  of  hissing,  roaring  flame. 
Jurgis  shrank  back  appalled,  for  he  thought  it  was  an 
accident ;  there  fell  a  pillar  of  white  flame,  dazzling  as  the 
sun,  swishing  like  a  huge  tree  falling  in  the  forest.  A 
torrent  of  sparks  swept  all  the  way  across  the  building, 
overwhelming  everything,  hiding  it  from  sight ;  and  then 
Jurgis  looked  through  the  fingers  of  his  hands,  and  saw 
pouring  out  of  the  caldron  a  cascade  of  living,  leaping  tire, 
white  with  a  whiteness  not  of  earth,  scorching  the  eyeballs. 
Incandescent  rainbows  shone  above  it,  blue,  red,  and  golden 
iights  played  about  it ;  but  the  stream  itself  was  white 


THE  JUNGLE 


247 


ineffable.  Out  of  regions  of  wonder  it  streamed,  the  very 
river  of  life  ;  and  the  soul  leaped  up  at  the  sight  of  it, 
fled  back  upon  it,  swift  and  resistless,  back  into  far-off 
lands,  where  beauty  and  terror  dwell. — Then  the  great 
caldron  tilted  back  again,  empty,  and  Jurgis  saw  to  his 
relief  that  no  one  was  hurt,  and  turned  and  followed  his 
guide  out  into  the  sunlight. 

They  went  through  the  blast-furnaces,  through  rolling- 
mills  where  bars  of  steel  were  tossed  about  and  chopped 
like  bits  of  cheese.  All  around  and  above  giant  machine- 
arms  were  flying,  giant  wheels  were  turning,  giant  ham¬ 
mers  crashing;  travelling  cranes  creaked  and  groaned 
overhead,  reaching  down  iron  hands  and  seizing  iron  prey 
—  it  was  like  standing  in  the  centre  of  the  earth,  where 
the  machinery  of  time  was  revolving. 

By  and  by  they  came  to  the  place  where  steel  rails  were 
made  ;  and  Jurgis  heard  a  toot  behind  him,  and  jumped 
out  of  the  way  of  a  car  with  a  white-hot  ingot  upon  it, 
the  size  of  a  man’s  body.  There  was  a  sudden  crash  and 
the  car  came  to  a  halt,  and  the  ingot  toppled  out  upon  a 
moving  platform,  where  steel  fingers  and  arms  seized  hold 
of  it,  punching  it  and  prodding  it  into  place,  and  hurrying 
it  into  the  grip  of  huge  rollers.  Then  it  came  out  upon 
the  other  side,  and  there  were  more  crashings  and  clatter- 
ings,  and  over  it  was  flopped,  like  a  pancake  on  a  gridiron, 
and  seized  again  and  rushed  back  at  you  through  another 
squeezer.  So  amid  deafening  uproar  it  clattered  to  and 
fro,  growing  thinner  and  flatter  and  longer.  The  ingot 
seemed  almost  a  living  thing  ;  it  did  not  want  to  run  this 
mad  course,  but  it  was  in  the  grip  of  fate,  it  was  tumbled 
on,  screeching  and  clanking  and  shivering  in  protest.  By 
and  by  it  was  long  and  thin,  a  great  red  snake  escaped 
from  purgatory  ;  and  then,  as  it  slid  through  the  rollers, 
you  v/ould  have  sworn  that  it  was  alive  —  it  writhed  and 
squirmed,  and  wriggles  and  shudders  passed  out  through 
its  tail,  all  but  flinging  it  off  by  their  violence.  .There 
was  no  rest  for  it  until  it  was  cold  and  black  —  and  then 
it  needed  only  to  be  cut  and  straightened  to  be  ready  for 
a  railroad. 


248 


a?B[a 


It  was  at  the  end  of  this  rail’s  progress  that  J  urgis  got 
his  chance.  They  had  to  be  moved  by  men  with  crowbars, 
and  the  boss  here  could  use  another  man.  So  he  took  off 
his  coat  and  set  to  work  on  the  spot. 

It  took  him  two  hours  to  get  to  this  place  every  day 
and  cost  him  a  dollar  and  twenty  cents  a  week.  As  this 
was  out  of  the  question,  he  wrapped  his  bedding  in  a 
bundle  and  took  it  with  him,  and  one  of  his  fellow-work¬ 
ing-men  introduced  him  to  a  Polish  lodging-house,  where 
he  might  have  the  privilege  of  sleeping  upon  the  floor  for 
ten  cents  a  night.  He  got  his  meals  at  free-lunch  counters, 
and  every  Saturday  night  he  went  home  —  bedding  and 
all — and  took  the  greater  part  of  his  money  to  the  family. 
Elzbieta  was  sorry  for  this  arrangement,  for  she  feared 
that  it  would  get  him  into  the  habit  of  living  without 
them,  and  once  a  week  was  not  very  often  for  him  to  see 
his  baby ;  but  there  was  no  other  way  of  arranging  it. 
There  was  no  chance  for  a  woman  at  the  steel-works,  and 
Marija  was  now  ready  for  work  again,  and  lured  on  from 
day  to  day  by  the  hope  of  finding  it  at  the  yards. 

In  a  week  Jurgis  got  over  his  sense  of  helplessness  and 
bewilderment  in  the  rail-mill.  He  learned  to  find  his  way 
about  and  to  take  all  the  miracles  and  terrors  for  granted, 
to  work  without  hearing  the  rumbling  and  crashing.  From 
blind  fear  he  went  to  the  other  extreme  ;  he  became  reck¬ 
less  and  indifferent,  like  all  the  rest  of  the  men,  who  took 
but  little  thought  of  themselves  in  the  ardor  of  their  work. 
It  was  wonderful,  when  one  came  to  think  of  it,  that  these 
men  should  have  taken  an  interest  in  the  work  they  did ; 
they  had  no  share  in  it  —  they  were  paid  by  the  hour,  and 
paid  no  more  for  being  interested.  Also  they  knew  that 
if  they  were  hurt  they  would  be  flung  aside  and  forgotten 
—  and  still  they  would  hurry  to  their  task  by  dangerous 
short-cuts,  would  use  methods  that  were  quicker  and  more 
effective  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  they  were  also  risky. 
His  fourth  day  at  his  work  J urgis  saw  a  man  stumble  while 
running  in  front  of  a  car,  and  have  his  foot  mashed  off  5 
and  before  be  had  been  there  three  weeks  he  was  witness 


THE  JUNGLE 


249 


of  a  yet  more  dr-eadful  accident.  There  was  a  row  ot 
brick-furnaces,  shining  white  through  every  crack  with 
the  molten  steel  inside.  Some  of  these  were  bulging  dan¬ 
gerously,  yet  men  worked  before  them,  wearing  blue 
glasses  when  they  opened  and  shut  the  doors.  One  morn¬ 
ing  as  Jurgis  was  passing,  a  furnace  blew  out,  spraying 
two  men  with  a  shower  of  liquid  fire.  As  they  lay  scream¬ 
ing  and  roiling  upon  the  ground  in  agony,  Jurgis  rushed 
to  help  them,  and  as  a  result  he  lost  a  good  part  of  the 
skin  from  the  inside  of  one  of  his  hands.  The  company 
doctor  bandaged  it  up,  but  he  got  no  other  thanks  from 
any  one,  and  was  laid  up  for  eight  working  days  without 
any  pay. 

Most  fortunately,  at  this  juncture,  Elzbieta  got  the 
long-awaited  chance  to  go  at  five  o’clock  in  the  morning 
and  help  scrub  the  office-floors  of  one  of  the  packers. 
Jurgis  came  home  and  covered  himself  with  blankets  to 
keep  warm,  and  divided  his  time  between  sleeping  and 
playing  with  little  An  tanas.  Juozapas  was  away  raking 
in  the  dump  a  good  part  of  the  time,  and  Elzbieta  and 
Marija  were  hunting  for  more  work. 

Antanas  was  now  over  a  year  and  a  half  old,  and  was  a 
perfect  talking-machine.  He  learned  so  fast  that  every 
week  when  Jurgis  came  home  it  seemed  to  him  as  if 
he  had  a  new  child.  He  would  sit  down  and  listen  and 
stare  at  him,  and  give  vent  to  delighted  exclamations, — 
“  Palauk  !  Muma  !  Tu  mano  szirdele  !  ”  The  little  fellow 
was  now  really  the  one  delight  that  Jurgis  had  in  the 
world  —  his  one  hope,  his  one  victory.  Thank  God,  An¬ 
tanas  was  a  boy  I  And  he  was  as  tough  as  a  pine-knot, 
and  with  the  appetite  of  a  wolf.  Notliing  had  hurt  him, 
and  nothing  could  hurt  him  ;  he  had  come  through  ai! 
the  suffering  and  deprivation  unscathed  —  only  shriller 
voiced  and  more  determined  in  his  grip  upon  life.  He 
was  a  terrible  child  to  manage,  was  Antanas,  but  his 
father  did  not  mind  that  —  he  would  watch  him  and  smile 
to  himself  with  satisfaction.  The  more  of  a  fighter  he 
was  the  better — he  would  need  to  fight  before  he  got 
fchrougfh 


17 


250 


THE  JUNGLE 


Jurgis  liad  got  tlie  habit  of  buying  the  Sunday  papes 
whenever  he  had  the  money  ;  a  most  wonderful  paper 
could  be  had  for  only  five  cents,  a  whole  armful,  with  a]J 
the  news  of  the  world  set  forth  in  big  headlines,  that 
Jurgis  could  spell  out  slowly,  with  the  children  to  help 
him  at  the  long  words.  There  was  battle  and  murder 
and  sudden  death  —  it  was  marvellous  how  they  ever  heard 
about  so  many  entertaining  and  thrilling  happenings  ;  the 
stories  must  be  all  true,  for  surely  no  man  could  have  made 
such  things  up,  and  besides,  there  were  pictures  of  them 
all,  as  real  as  life.  One  of  these  papers  was  as  good  as  a 
circus,  and  nearly  as  good  as  a  spree  —  certainly  a  most 
wonderful  treat  for  a  working-man,  who  was  tired  out  and 
stupefied,  and  had  never  had  any  education,  and  whose 
work  was  one  dull,  sordid  grind,  day  after  day,  and  year 
after  year,  with  never  a  sight  of  a  green  field  nor  an  hour’s 
entertainment,  nor  anything  but  liquor  to  stimulate  his 
imagination.  Among  other  things,  these  papers  had  pages 
full  of  comical  pictures,  and  these  were  the  main  joy  in 
life  to  little  Antanas.  He  treasured  them  up,  and  would 
drag  them  out  and  make  his  father  tell  him  about  them  ; 
there  were  all  sorts  of  animals  among  them,  and  Antanas 
could  tell  the  names  of  all  of  them,  lying  upon  the  floor  for 
hours  and  pointing  them  out  with  his  chubby  little  fingers. 
Whenever  the  story  was  plain  enough  for  Jurgis  to  make 
out,  Antanas  would  have  it  repeated  to  him,  and  then  he 
would  remember  it,  prattling  funny  little  sentences  and 
mixing  it  up  with  other  stories  in  an  irresistible  fashion. 
Also  his  quaint  pronunciation  of  words  was  such  a  delight 
—  and  the  phrases  he  would  pick  up  and  remember,  the 
most  outlandish  and  impossible  things  I  The  first  time 
that  the  little  rascal  burst  out  with  “  God-damn,”  his 
father  nearly  rolled  off  the  chair  with  glee  ;  but  in  the 
end  he  wa.s  sorry  for  this,  for  Antanas  was  soon  “  God- 
damning  ”  everything  and  everybody. 

And  then,  when  he  was  able  to  use  his  hands,  Jurgif 
took  his  bedding  again  and  went  back  to  his  task  of  shift¬ 
ing  rails.  It  was  now  April,  and  the  snow  had  given 


THE  JUNGLE 


251 


place  to  cold  rains,  and  the  unpaved  street  m  front  of 
Aniele’s  house  was  turned  into  a  canal.  Jurgis  would 
have  to  wade  through  it  to  get  home,  and  if  it  'vas  late 
he  might  easily  get  stuck  to  his  waist  in  tiie  mire.  But  lie 
did  not  mind  this  much  —  it  was  a  promise  that  summer 
was  coming.  Marija  had  now  gotten  a  place  a.s  beef- 
trimmer  in  one  of  the  smaller  packing-plants ;  and  he  told 
himself  that  he  had  learned  his  lesson  now,  and  would  meet 
with  no  more  accidents  —  so  that  at  last  there  was  pros¬ 
pect  of  an  end  to  their  long  agony.  They  could  save 
money  again,  and  when  another  winter  came  they  would 
have  a  comfortable  place ;  and  the  children  would  be  off 
the  streets  and  in  school  again,  and  they  might  set  to  work 
to  nurse  back  into  life  their  habits  of  decency  and  kind¬ 
ness.  So  once  more  Jurgis  began  to  make  plans  and 
dream  dreams. 

And  then  one  Saturday  night  he  jumped  off  the  car 
and  started  home,  with  the  sun  shining  low  under  the 
edge  of  a  bank  of  clouds  that  had  been  pouring  floods  of 
water  into  the  mud-soaked  street.  There  was  a  rainbow 
in  the  sky,  and  another  in  his  breast  —  for  he  had  thirty- 
six  hours’  rest  before  him,  and  a  chance  to  see  his  family. 
Then  suddenly  he  came  in  sight  of  the  house,  and  noticed 
that  there  was  a  crowd  before  the  door.  He  ran  up  the 
steps  and  pushed  his  way  in,  and  saw  Aniele’s  kitchen 
crowded  with  excited  women.  It  reminded  him  so  vividly 
of  the  time  when  he  had  come  home  from  jail  and  found 
Ona  dying,  that  his  heart  almost  stood  still.  “What’s 
the  matter?  ”  he  cried. 

A  dead  silence  had  fallen  in  the  room,  and  he  saw  that 
every  one  was  staring  at  him.  “  What’s  the  matter?”  he 
exclaimed  again. 

And  then,  up  in  the  garret,  he  heard  sounds  of  wailing, 
in  Marija’s  voice.  He  started  for  the  ladder  —  and  Aniele 
seized  him  by  the  arm.  “No,  no  I”  she  exclaimed, 
“  Don’t  go  up  there  I  " 

“  What  is  it  ?  ”  he  shouted. 

And  the  old  woman  answered  him  weakly:  “It’s  An- 
tanas.  He’s  dead.  He  was  drowned  out  in  the  street ! 


CHAPTER  XXII 


JuRGis  took  the  news  in  a  peculiar  way.  He  turned 
deadly  pale,  but  he  caught  himself,  and  for  half  a  minute 
stood  in  the  middle  of  the  room,  clenching  his  hands  tightly 
and  setting  his  teeth.  Then  he  pushed  Aniele  aside  and 
strode  into  the  next  room  and  climbed  the  ladder. 

In  the  corner  was  a  blanket,  with  a  form  half  showing 
beneath  it ;  and  beside  it  lay  Elzbieta,  whether  crying  or 
in  a  faint,  Jurgis  could  not  tell.  Marija  was  pacing  the 
room,  screaming  and  wringing  her  hands.  He  clenched 
his  hands  tighter  yet,  and  his  voice  was  hard  as  he  spoke. 

“  How  did  it  happen?  ”  he  asked. 

Marija  scarcely  heard  him  in  her  agony.  He  repeated 
the  question,  louder  and  yet  more  harshly.  “He  fell  off  the 
sidewalk  I  ”  she  wailed.  The  sidewalk  in  front  of  the 
house  was  a  platform  made  of  half -rotten  boards,  about 
five  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sunken  street. 

“  How  did  he  come  to  be  there?”  he  demanded. 

“  He  went  —  he  went  out  to  play,”  Marija  sobbed,  her 
voice  choking  her.  “We  couldn’t  make  him  stay  in.  He 
must  have  got  caught  in  the  mud  1  ” 

“  Are  you  sure  that  he  is  dead?”  he  demanded. 

“  Ail  ai I  ”  she  wailed.  “  Yes ;  we  had  the  doctor.” 

Then  Jurgis  stood  a  few  seconds,  wavering.  He  did 
not  shed  a  tear.  He  took  one  glance  more  at  the  blanket 
with  the  little  form  beneath  it,  and  then  turned  suddenly 
to  the  ladder  and  climbed  down  again.  A  silence  fell 
once  more  in  the  room  as  he  entered.  He  went  straight 
to  the  door,  passed  out,  and  started  down  the  street. 

When  his  wife  had  died,  Jurgis  made  for  the  nearest 
saloon,  but  he  did  not  do  that  now,  though  he  had  his 

252 


THE  JUNGLE 


253 


week’s  wages  in  his  pocket.  He  walked  and  walked,  see¬ 
ing  nothing,  splashing  through  mud  and  water.  Later  on 
he  sat  down  upon  a  step  and  hid  his  face  in  his  hands  and 
for  half  an  hour  or  so  he  did  not  move.  Now  and  then  he 
would  whisper  to  himself:  “  Dead  I  Dead!’’' 

Finally,  he  got  up  and  walked  on  again.  It  was  about 
sunset,  and  he  went  on  and  on  until  it  was  dark,  when  he 
was  stopped  by  a  railroad-crossing.  The  gates  were  down, 
and  a  long  train  of  freight-cars  was  thundering  by.  He 
stood  and  watched  it ;  and  all  at  once  a  wild  impulse  seized 
him,  a  thought  that  had  been  lurking  within  him,  un¬ 
spoken,  unrecognized,  leaped  into  sudden  life.  He  started 
down  the  track,  and  when  he  was  past  the  gate-keeper’s 
shanty  he  sprang  forward  and  swung  himself  on  to  one  of 
the  cars. 

By  and  by  the  train  stopped  again,  and  Jurgis  sprang 
down  and  ran  under  the  car,  and  hid  himself  upon  the 
truck.  Here  he  sat,  and  when  the  train  started  again,  he 
fought  a  battle  with  his  soul.  He  gripped  his  hands  and 
set  his  teeth  together — he  had  not  wept,  and  he  would 
not  —  not  a  tear!  It  was  past  and  over,  and  he  was 
done  with  it  —  he  would  fling  it  off  his  shoulders,  be  free 
of  it,  the  whole  business,  that  night.  It  should  go  like  a 
black,  hateful  nightmare,  and  in  the  morning  he  would  be 
a  new  man.  And  every  time,  that  a  thought  of  it  assailed 
him  —  a  tender  memory,  a  ’  'ace  of  a  tear  —  he  rose  up, 
cursing  with  rage,  and  poi.  ided  it  down. 

He  was  fighting  for  his  life ;  he  gnashed  his  teeth 
together  in  his  desperation.  He  had  been  a  fool,  a  foolT 
He  had  wasted  his  life,  he  had  wrecked  himself,  with  his 
accursed  weakness;  and  now  he  was  done  with  it  —  he 
would  tear  it  out  of  him,  root  and  branch  1  There  should 
be  no  more  tears  and  no  more  tenderness ;  he  had  had 
enough  of  them  —  they  had  sold  him  into  slavery  I  Now 
he  was  going  to  be  free,  to  tear  off  his  shackles,  to  rise  up 
and  fight.  He  was  glad  that  the  end  had  come  —  it  had 
to  come  some  time,  and  it  was  just  as  well  now.  This  was 
no  world  for  women  and  children,  and  the  sooner  they  got 
out  of  it  the  better  for  them.  Whatever  Antanas  might 


254 


THE  JUNGLE 


suffer  where  he  was,  he  could  suffer  no  more  than  he 
would  have  had  he  stayed  upon  earth.  And  meantime 
his  father  had  thought  the  last  thought  about  him  that 
he  meant  to;  he  was  going  to  think  of  himself,  he  was 
going  to  fight  for  himself,  against  the  world  that  had  baffled 
him  and  tortured  him  I 

So  he  went  on,  tearing  up  all  the  flowers  from  the  gar¬ 
den  of  his  soul,  and  setting  his  heel  upon  them.  The  train 
thundered  deafeningly,  and  a  storm  of  dust  blew  in  his 
face;  but  though  it  stopped  now  and  then  through  the 
night,  he  clung  where  he  was  —  he  would  cling  there  until 
he  was  driven  off,  for  every  mile  that  he  got  from  Pack- 
ingtown  meant  another  load  from  his  mind. 

Whenever  the  cars  stopped  a  warm  breeze  blew  upon 
him,  a  breeze  laden  with  the  perfume  of  fresh  fields,  oi 
honeysuckle  and  clover.  He  snuffed  it,  and  it  made  his 
heart  beat  wildly  —  he  was  out  in  the  country  again  I  He 
was  going  to  live  in  the  country  I  When  the  dawn  came 
he  was  peering  out  with  hungry  eyes,  getting  glimpses  of 
meadows  and  woods  and  rivers.  At  last  he  could  stand  it 
no  longer,  and  when  the  train  stopped  again  he  crawled 
out.  Upon  the  top  of  the  car  was  a  brakeman,  who  shook 
his  fist  and  swore ;  J urgis  waved  his  hand  derisively,  and 
started  across  the  country. 

Only  think  that  he  had  been  a  countryman  all  his  life ; 
and  for  three  long  years  he  had  never  seen  a  country  sight 
nor  heard  a  country  sound  I  Excepting  for  that  one  walk 
when  he  left  jail,  when  he  was  too  much  worried  to  notice 
anything,  and  for  a  few  times  that  he  had  rested  in  the 
city  parks  in  the  winter  time  when  he  was  out  of  work, 
he  had  literally  never  seen  a  tree  I  And  now  he  felt  like 
a  bird  lifted  up  and  borne  away  upon  a  gale ;  he  stopped  and 
stared  at  each  new  sight  of  wonder,  —  at  a  herd  of  cows, 
and  a  meadow  full  of  daisies,  at  hedgerows  set  thick  with 
June  roses,  at  little  birds  singing  in  the  trees. 

Then  he  came  to  a  farm-house,  and  after  getting  himself 
a  stick  for  protection,  he  approached  it.  The  farmer  was 
greasing  a  wagon  in  front  of  the  barn,  and  Jurgis  went 
to  him.  “I  would  like  to  eet  some  breakfast,  please,’ 
he  said. 


THE  JUNGLE 


“  Do  you  want  to  work?  ”  said  the  farmer. 

**No,”  said  Jurgis,  “I  don’t.” 

“  Then  you  can’t  get  anything  here,"  snapped  tha 
other. 

“I  meant  to  pay  for  it,”  said  Jurgis. 

•‘Oh,”  said  the  farmer;  and  then  added  sarcastically, 
“  We  don’t  serve  breakfast  after  7  a.m.” 

“  I  am  very  hungry,”  said  J  urgis,  gravely  ;  “  I  would 
like  to  buy  some  food.” 

“Ask  the  woman,”  said  the  farmer,  nodding  over  hia 
shoulder.  The  “  woman  ”  was  more  tractable,  and  for  a 
dime  Jurgis  secured  two  thick  sandwiches  and  a  piece  of 
pie  and  two  apples.  He  walked  off  eating  the  pie,  as  the 
least  convenient  thing  to  carry.  In  a  few  minutes  he 
came  to  a  stream,  and  he  climbed  a  fence  and  walked 
down  the  bank,  along  a  woodland  path.  By  and  by  he 
found  a  comfortable  spot,  and  there  he  devoured  his  meal, 
slaking  his  thirst  at  the  stream.  Then  he  lay  for  hours, 
just  gazing  and  drinking  in  joy;  until  at  last  he  felt 
sleepy,  and  lay  down  in  the  shade  of  a  bush. 

When  he  awoke  the  sun  was  shining  hot  in  his  face. 
He  sat  up  and  stretched  his  arms,  and  then  gazed  at  the 
water  sliding  by.  There  was  a  deep  pool,  sheltered  and 
silent,  below  him,  and  a  sudden  wonderful  idea  rushed 
upon  him.  He  might  have  a  bath  1  The  water  was  free, 
and  he  might  get  into  it  —  ail  the  way  into  it  1  It  would 
be  the  first  time  that  he  had  been  all  the  way  into  the  water 
since  he  left  Lithuania  1 

When  Jurgis  had  first  come  to  the  stockyards  he  had 
been  as  clean  as  any  working-man  could  well  be.  But 
later  on,  what  with  sickness  and  cold  and  hunger  and 
discouragement,  and  the  filthiness  of  his  work,  and  the 
vermin  in  his  home,  he  had  given  up  washing  in  winter, 
and  in  summer  only  as  much  of  him  as  would  go  into  a 
basin.  He  had  had  a  shower-bath  in  jail,  but  nothing 
since  — and  now  he  would  have  a  swim  1 

The  water  was  M^arm,  and  he  splashed  about  like  a  very 
boy  in  his  glee.  Afterward  he  sat  down  in  the  water  near 
che  bank,  and  proceeded  to  scrub  himself  —  soberly  and 


256 


THE  jungle; 


methodically,  scouring  every  inch  of  him  with  sandu 
While  he  was  doing  it  he  would  do  it  thoroughly,  and  see 
how  it  felt  to  be  clean.  He  even  scrubbed  his  head  with 
sand,  and  combed  what  the  men  called  “crumbs”  out  of 
his  long,  black  hair,  holding  his  head  under  water  as  long 
as  he  could,  to  see  if  he  could  not  kill  them  all.  Then, 
seeing  that  the  sun  was  still  hot,  he  took  his  clothes  from 
the  bank  and  proceeded  to  wash  them,  piece  by  piece  ;  as 
the  dirt  and  grease  went  floating  off  down-stream  he 
grunted  with  satisfaction  and  soused  the  clothes  again, 
venturing  even  to  dream  that  he  might  get  rid  of  the 
fertilizer. 

He  hung  them  all  up,  and  while  they  were  drying  he 
lay  down  in  the  sun  and  had  another  long  sleep.  They 
were  hot  and  stiff  as  boards  on  top,  and  a  little  damp  on 
the  under-side,  when  he  awakened;  but  being  hungry,  he 
put  them  on  and  set  out  again.  He  had  no  knife,  but 
with  some  labor  he  broke  himself  a  good  stout  club,  and, 
armed  with  this,  he  marched  down  the  road  again. 

Before  long  he  came  to  a  big  farm-house,  and  turned  up 
the  lane  that  led  to  it.  It  was  just  supper-time,  and  the 
farmer  was  washing  his  hands  at  the  kitchen-door. 
“Please,  sir,”  said  Jurgis,  “can  I  have  something  to  eat? 
I  can  pay.”  To  which  the  farmer  responded  promptly, 
“We  don’t  feed  tramps  here.  Get  outl  ” 

Jurgis  went  without  a  word  ;  but  as  he  passed  round 
the  bam  he  came  to  a  freshly  ploughed  and  harrov/ed  field, 
in  which  the  farmer  had  set  out  some  5mung  peach-trees; 
and  as  he  walked  he  jerked  up  a  row  of  them  by  the  roots, 
more  than  a  hundred  trees  in  all,  before  he  reached  the 
end  of  the  field.  That  was  his  answer,  and  it  showed  his 
mood  ;  from  now  on  he  was  fighting,  and  the  man  who  hit 
him  would  get  all  that  he  gave,  every  time. 

Beyond  the  orchard  Jurgis  struck  through  a  patch  of 
woods,  and  then  a  field  of  winter-grain,  and  came  at  last 
to  another  road.  Before  long  he  saw  another  farm-house, 
and,  as  it  was  beginning  to  cloud  over  a  little,  he  asked 
here  for  shelter  as  well  as  food.  Seeing  the  farmer  eying 
him  dubiously,  he  added,  “  I’ll  be  glad  to  sleep  in  the  barn.” 


THJto 


257 


Well,  I  dunno,'*  said  the  other.  “  Do  you  smoke  ?  ** 

“Sometimes,”  said  Jurgis,  “but  I’ll  do  it  out  of 
doors.”  When  the  man  had  assented,  he  inquired, 
“  How  much  will  it  cost  me  ?  1  haven’t  very  much 
money.” 

“  I  reckon  about  twenty  cents  for  supper,”  replied  the 
farmer.  “  I  won’t  charge  ye  for  the  barn.” 

So  J  urgis  went  in,  and  sat  down  at  the  table  with  the 
farmer’s  wife  and  half  a  dozen  children.  It  was  a  bounti¬ 
ful  meal  —  there  were  baked  beans  and  mashed  potatoes 
and  asparagus  chopped  and  stewed,  and  a  dish  of  straw¬ 
berries,  and  great,  thick  slices  of  bread,  and  a  pitcher  of 
milk.  Jurgis  had  not  had  such  a  feast  since  his  wedding 
day,  and  ho  made  a  mighty  effort  to  put  in  his  twenty 
cents’  worth. 

They  were  all  of  them  too  hungry  to  talk ;  but  after¬ 
ward  they  sat  upon  the  steps  and  smoked,  and  the  farmer 
questioned  his  guest.  When  Jurgis  had  explained  that 
he  was  a  working-man  from  Chicago,  and  that  he  did  not 
know  just  whither  he  was  bound,  the  other  said,  “  Why 
don’t  you  stay  here  and  work  for  me  ?  ” 

“I’m  not  looking  for  work  just  now,”  Jurgis  answered. 

“  I’ll  pay  ye  good,”  said  the  other,  eying  his  big  form 
—  “a  dollar  a  day  and  board  ye.  Help’s  terrible  scarce 
round  here.” 

“  Is  that  winter  as  well  as  summer?”  Jurgis  demanded 
quickly. 

“  N  —  no,”  said  the  farmer;  “  I  couldn’t  keep  ye  after 
November —  I  ain’t  got  a  big  enough  place  for  that.” 

“  I  see,”  said  the  other,  “that’s  what  I  thought.  When 
you  get  through  working  your  horses  this  fall,  will  jmu 
turn  them  out  in  the  snow?”  (Jurgis  was  beginning  to 
think  for  himself  nowadays.) 

“  It  ain’t  quite  the  same,”  the  farmer  answered,  seeing 
the  point.  “  There  ought  to  be  work  a  strong  fellow  like 
you  can  find  to  do,  in  the  cities,  or  some  place,  in  the  winter 
time.” 

“  Yes,”  said  Jurgis,  “  that’s  what  they  aU  think ;  and  so 
they  crowd  into  the  cities,  and  when  they  have  to  beg  or 


258 


THE  (jtEE 


ksteal  to  live,  then  people  ask  ’em  why  they  don*t  go  into 
the  country,  where  help  is  scarce.” 

The  farmer  meditated  awhile. 

“  How  about  when  your  money’s  gone  ?  ”  he  inquired, 
finally.  “  You’!!  have  to,  then,  won’t  you  ?  ” 

“Wait  till  she’s  gone,”  said  Jurgis;  “then  I’ll  see.” 

He  had  a  long  sleep  in  the  barn  and  then  a  big  break¬ 
fast  of  coffee  and  bread  and  oatmeal  and  stewed  cherries, 
for  which  the  man  charged  him  only  fifteen  cents,  perhaps 
having  been  influenced  by  his  arguments.  Then  Jurgis 
bade  farewell,  and  went  on  his  way. 

Such  was  the  beginning  of  his  life  as  a  tramp.  It  was 
seldom  he  got  as  fair  treatment  as  from  this  last  farmer, 
and  so  as  time  went  on  he  learned  to  shun  the  houses  and 
to  prefer  sleeping  in  the  fields.  When  it  rained  he  would 
find  a  deserted  building,  if  he  could,  and  if  not,  he  would 
wait  until  after  dark  and  then,  with  his  stick  ready,  begin 
a  stealthy  approach  upon  a  barn.  Generally  he  could  get 
in  before  the  dog  got  scent  of  him,  and  then  he  would 
hide  in  the  hay  and  be  safe  until  morning  ;  if  not,  and  the 
dog  attacked  him,  he  would  rise  up  and  make  a  retreat  in 
battle  order.  J  urgis  was  not  the  mighty  man  he  had  once 
been,  but  his  arms  were  still  good,  and  there  were  few 
farm  dogs  he  needed  to  hit  more  than  once. 

Before  long  there  came  raspberries,  and  then  black¬ 
berries,  to  help  him  save  his  money ;  and  there  were  apples 
in  the  orchards  and  potatoes  in  the  ground  —  he  learned 
to  note  the  places  and  fill  his  pockets  after  dark.  Twice 
he  even  managed  to  capture  a  chicken,  and  had  a  feast, 
once  in  a  deserted  barn  and  the  other  time  in  a  lonely 
spot  alongside  of  a  stream.  When  all  of  these  things 
failed  him  he  used  his  money  earefullj'-,  but  without  worry 
—  for  he  saw  that  he  could  earn  more  whenever  he  chose. 
Half  an  hour’s  chopping  wood  in  his  lively  fashion  was 
enough  to  bring  him  a  meal,  and  when  the  farmer  had 
seen  him  working  he  would  sometimes  try  to  bribe  him  to 
stay. 

But  Jurgis  was  not  staying.  He -was  a  free  man  now. 


THE  JUNGLE 


259 


a  ouccaneer.  The  old  Wanderlust  had  got  mto.  his  blood, 
the  joy  of  the  liB^TCftfnd  life,  the  joy  of  seeking,  of  hoping 
without  limit.  There  were  mishaps  and  discomforts  — 
but  at  least  there  was  always  something  new  ;  and  only 
think  what  it  meant  to  a  man  who  for  years  had  been 
penned  up  in  one  place,  seeing  nothing  but  one  dreary 
prospect  of  shanties  and  factories,  to  be  suddenly  set 
loose  beneath  the  open  sky,  to  behold  new  landscapes, 
new  places,  and  new  people  every  hourl  To  a  man 
whose  whole  life  had  consisted  of  doing  one  certain 
thing  all  day,  until  he  was  so  exhausted  that  he  could 
only  lie  down  and  sleep  until  the  next  day  —  and  to  be 
cow  his  own  master,  working  as  he  pleased  and  when  he 
pleased,  and  facing  a  new  adventure  every  hourl 

Then,  too,  his  health  came  back  to  him,  all  his  lost  youth¬ 
ful  vigor,  his  joy  and  [lower  that  he  had  mourned  and  forgot¬ 
ten  I  It  came  with  a  sudden  rush,  bewildering  him,  startling 
him ;  it  was  as  if  his  dead  childhood  had  come  back  to 
him,  laughing  and  calling  I  What  with  plenty  to  eat  and 
fresh  air  and  exercise  that  was  taken  as  it  pleased  him,  he 
would  waken  from  his  sleep  and  start  off  not  knowing  what 
to  do  with  his  energy,  stretching  his  arms,  laughing,  sing¬ 
ing  old  songs  of  home  that  came  back  to  him.  Now  and 
then,  of  course,  he  could  not  help  but  think  of  little  An- 
tanas,  wliom  he  should  never  see  again,  whose  little  voice 
he  should  never  hear ;  and  then  he  would  have  to  battle 
with  himself.  Sometimes  at  night  he  would  waken  dream¬ 
ing  of  Ona,  and  stretch  out  his  arms  to  her,  and  wet  the 
ground  with  his  tears.  But  in  the  morning  lie  would  get 
up  and  shake  himself,  and  stride  away  again  to  battle  with 
the  world. 

He  never  asked  where  he  was  nor  where  he  was  going ; 
the  country  was  big  enough,  he  knew,  and  there  was  no 
danger  of  his  coming  to  the  end  of  it.  And  of  course  he 
could  always  have  company  for  the  asking  —  everywhere 
he  went  there  were  men  living  just  as  he  lived,  and  whom 
he  was  welcome  to  join.  He  was  a  stranger  at  the  busi¬ 
ness,  but  they  were  not  clannish,  and  they  taught  him  aU 
their  tricks,  —  what  towns  and  villages  it  was  best  to  keep 


260 


THE  JUNGLE 


away  from,  and  how  to  read  the  secret  signs  upon  the 
fences,  and  when  to  beg  and  when  to  steal,  and  just  how 
to  do  both.  They  laughed  at  his  ideas  of  paying  for  any¬ 
thing  with  money  or  with  work  —  for  they  got  all  they 
wanted  without  either.  Now  and  then  Jurgis  camped  out 
with  a  gang  of  them  in  some  woodland  haunt,  and  foraged 
with  them  in  the  neighborhood  at  night.  And  then  among 
them  some  one  would  “  take  a  shine  ”  to  him,  and  they 
would  go  off  together  and  travel  for  a  week,  exchanging 
reminiscences. 

Of  these  professional  tramps  a  great  many  had,  of  course, 
been  shiftless  and  vicious  all  their  lives.  But  the  vast 
majority  of  them  had  been  working-men,  had  fought  the 
long  fight  as  Jurgis  had,  and  found  that  it  was  a  losing 
fight,  and  given  up.  Later  on  he  encountered  yet  another 
sort  of  men,  those  from  whose  ranks  the  tramps  were 
recruited,  men  who  were  homeless  and  wandering,  but 
still  seeking  work  —  seeking  it  in  the  harvest-fields.  Of 
these  there  was  an  army,  the  huge  surplus  labor  army  of 
society ;  called  into  being  under  the  stern  system  of  nature, 
to  do  the  casual  work  of  the  world,  the  tasks  which  were 
transient  and  irregular,  and  yet  which  had  to  be  done. 
They  did  not  know  that  they  were  such,  of  course ;  they 
only  knew  that  they  sought  the  job,  and  that  the  job  was 
fleeting.  In  the  early  summer  they  would  be  in  Texas, 
and  as  the  crops  were  ready  they  would  follow  north  with 
the  season,  ending  with  the  fall  in  Manitoba,  Then  they 
would  seek  out  the  big  lumber-camps,  where  there  was 
winter  work ;  or  failing  in  this,  would  drift  to  the  cities, 
and  live  upon  what  they  had  managed  to  save,  with  the 
help  of  such  transient  work  as  was  there, —  the  loading  and 
unloading  of  steamships  and  drays,  the  digging  of  ditches 
and  the  shovelling  of  snow.  If  there  were  more  of  them 
on  hand  than  chanced  to  be  needed,  the  weaker  ones  died 
off  of  cold  and  hunger,  again  according  to  thfe  stern  svs- 
tem  of  nature. 

It  was  in  the  latter  part  of  July,  when  Jurgis  was  ib. 
Missouri,  that  he  came  upon  the  harvest-work.  Here  were 
crops  that  men  had  worked  for  three  or  four  months  to 


THE  JUNGLE 


261 


prepare,  and  of  which  they  would  lose  nearly  aU  unless 
they  could  find  others  to  help  them  for  a  week  or  two. 
So  all  over  the  land  there  was  a  cry  for  labor  —  agencies 
were  set  up  and  all  the  cities  were  drained  of  men,  even 
college  boys  were  brought  by  the  car-load,  and  hordes  of 
frantic  farmers  would  hold  up  trains  and  carry  off  wagon¬ 
loads  of  men  by  main  force.  Not  that  they  did  not  pay 
them  well  —  any  man  could  get  two  dollars  a  day  and  his 
board,  and  the  best  men  could  get  two  dollars  and  a  half 
or  three. 

The  harvest-fever  was  in  the  very  air,  and  no  man  with 
any  spirit  in  him  could  be  in  that  region  and  not  catch  it. 
Jurgis  joined  a  gang  and  worked  from  dawn  till  dark, 
eighteen  hours  a  day,  for  two  weeks  without  a  break. 
Then  he  had  a  sum  of  money  that  would  have  been  a  for¬ 
tune  to  him  in  the  old  days  of  misery  —  but  what  could 
he  do  with  it  now?  To  be  sure  he  might  have  put  it  in  a 
bank,  and,  if  he  were  fortunate,  get  it  back  again  when  he 
wanted  it.  But  Jurgis  was  now  a  homeless  man,  wander¬ 
ing  over  a  continent ;  and  what  did  he  know  about  bank¬ 
ing  and  drafts  and  letters  of  credit?  If  he  carried  the 
money  about  with  him,  he  would  surely  be  robbed  in  the 
end;  and  so  what  was  there  for  him  to  do  but  enjoy  it 
while  he  could?  On  a  Saturday  night  he  drifted  into  a 
town  with  his  fellows;  and  because  it  was  raining,  and 
there  was  no  other  place  provided  for  him,  he  went  to  a 
saloon.  And  there  were  some  who  treated  him  and  whom 
he  had  to  treat,  and  there  was  laughter  and  singing  and 
good  cheer ;  and  then  out  of  the  rear  part  of  the  saloon-  a 
girl’s  face,  red-cheeked  and  merry,  smiled  at  Jurgis,  and 
his  heart  thumped  suddenly  in  his  throat.  He  nodded  to 
her,  and  she  came  and  sat  by  him,  and  they  had  more 
drink,  and  then  he  went  upstairs  into  a  room  with  her,  and 
the  wild  beast  rose  up  withan  him  and  screamed,  as  it  has 
screamed  in  the  jungle  from  the  dawn  of  time.  And  then 
becauc?  of  his  memories  and  his  shame,  he  was  glad  when 
others  joined  them,  men  and  women ;  and  they  had  more 
drink  and  spent  the  night  in  wild  rioting  and  debauchery. 
In  the  van  of  the  surplus-labor  army,  there  followed 


THE  JUNGLE 


another,  an  army  of  women,  they  also  struggling-  for  life 
under  the  stern  system  of  nature.  Because  there  were 
rich  men  who  sought  pleasure,  there  had  been  ease  and 
plenty  for  them  so  long  as  they  were  young  and  beautiful ; 
and  later  on,  when  they  were  crowded  out  by  others 
younger  and  more  beautiful,  they  went  out  to  follow  upon 
the  trail  of  the  working-men.  Sometimes  they  came  of 
themselves,  and  the  saloon-keepers  shared  with  them  x  or 
sometimes  they  were  handled  by  agencies,  the  same  as  the 
labor  army.  They  were  in  the  towns  in  harvest-time, 
near  the  lumber-camps  in  the  winter,  in  the  cities  when 
the  men  came  there ;  if  a  regiment  were  encamped,  or  a 
railroad  or  canal  being  made,  or  a  great  exposition  getting 
ready,  the  crowd  of  women  were  on  hand,  living  in  shanties 
or  saloons  or  tenement-rooms,  sometimes  eight  or  ten  of 
them  together. 

In  the  morning  Jurgis  had  not  a  cent,  and  he  went  out 
upon  the  road  again.  He  was  sick  and  disgusted,  but 
after  the  new  plan  of  his  life,  he  crushed  his  feelings 
down.  He  had  made  a  fool  of  himself,  but  he  could  not 
help  it  now  —  all  he  could  do  was  to  see  that  it  did  not 
happen  again.  So  he  tramped  on  until  exercise  and  fresh 
air  banished  his  headache,  and  his  strength  and  joy  re¬ 
turned.  This  happened  to  him  every  time,  for  Jurgis 
was  still  a  creature  of  impulse,  and  his  pleasures  had  not 
yet  become  business.  It  would  be  a  long  time  before  he 
could  be  like  the  majority  of  these  men  of  the  road,  who 
roamed  until  the  hunger  for  drink  and  for  women  mas¬ 
tered  them,  and  then  went  to  work  with  a  purpose  in 
mind,  and  stopped  when  they  had  the  price  of  a  spree. 

On  the  contrary,  try  as  he  would,  Jurgis  could  not  help 
being  made  miserable  by  his  conscience.  It  was  the  ghost 
^hat  would  not  down.  It  would  come  upon  him  in  the 
most  unexpected  places — sometimes  it  fairly  drove  him 
to  drink. 

One  night  he  was  caught  by  a  thunder-storm,  and  he 
sought  shelter  in  a  little  house  just  outside  of  a  town.  _  It 
was  a  working-man’s  home,  and  the  owner  was  a  Slav  like 
himself,  a  new  emigrant  from  White  Russia ;  he  bade 


THE  JUNGLE 


263 


Jurgis  welcome  in  his  home  language,  and  told  him  to 
come  to  the  kitchen-fire  and  dry  himself.  He  had  no  bed 
for  him,  but  there  was  straw  in  the  garret,  and  he  could 
make  out.  The  man’s  wife  was  cooking  tiie  supper,  and 
their  children  were  playing  about  on  the  floor.  Jurgia 
sat  and  exchanged  thoughts  with  him  about  the  old  coun¬ 
try,  and  the  places  where  they  had  been  and  the  work  they 
had  done.  Then  they  ate,  and  afterward  sat  and  smoked 
and  talked  more  about  America,  and  how  they  found  it. 
In  the  middle  of  a  sentence,  however,  Jurgis  stopped, 
seeing  that  the  woman  had  brought  a  big  basin  of  water 
and  was  proceeding  to  undress  her  youngest  baby.  The 
rest  had  crawled  into  the  closet  wliere  they  slept,  but 
the  baby  was  to  have  a  bath,  the  working-man  explained., 
The  nights  had  begun  to  be  chilly,  and  his  mother,  igno¬ 
rant  as  to  the  climate  in  America,  had  sewed  him  up  for 
the  winter;  then  it  had  turned  warm  again,  and  some 
kind  of  a  rash  had  broken  out  on  the  child.  The  doctor 
had  said  she  must  bathe  him  every  night,  and  she,  foolish 
woman,  believed  him. 

Jurgis  scarcely  heard  the  explanation;  he  was  watch¬ 
ing  the  baby.  Ha  was  about  a  year  old,  and  a  sturdy 
little  fellow,  with  soft  fat  legs,  and  a  round  ball  of  a  stom¬ 
ach,  and  eyes  as  black  as  coals.  His  pimples  did  not  seem 
to  bother  him  much,  and  he  was  wild  with  glee  over  the 
bath,  kicking  and  squirming  and  chuckling  with  delight, 
pulling  at  his  mother’s  face  and  then  at  his  own  little  toes. 
When  she  put  him  into  the  basin  he  sat  in  the  midst  of  it 
and  grinned,  splashing  the  water  over  himself  and  squeal¬ 
ing  like  a  little  pig.  He  spoke  in  Russian,  of  which  Jui’gis 
knew  some  ;  he  spoke  it  with  the  quaintest  of  baby  accents 
—  and  every  word  of  it  brought  back  to  Jurgis  some  word 
of  his  own  dead  little  one,  and  stabbed  him  like  a  knife. 
He  ,sat  perfectly  motionless,  silent,  but  gripping  his  hands 
tightly,  while  a  storm  gathered  in  his  bosom  and  a  flood 
heaped  itself  up  behind  his  eyes.  And  in  the  end  he 
could  bear  it  no  more,  but  buried  his  tace  in  his  hands 
and  burst  into  tears,  to  the  alarm  and  amazemeni.  of  his 
hosts.  Between  the  shame  of  this  and  his  woe 


264 


IHE  JUNGLE 


could  not  stand  it^  and  got  up  and  rushed  out  mto  the 
rain. 

He  went  on  and  on  down  the  road,  finally  coming  to  a  black 
woods,  where  he  hid  and  wept  as  if  his  heart  would  break. 
Ah,  what  agony  was  that,  what  despair,  when  the  tomb  of 
memory  was  rent  open  and  the  ghosts  of  his  old  life  came 
forth  to  scourge  him !  What  terror  to  see  what  he  had 
been  and  now  could  never  be  —  to  see  Ona  and  his  child 
and  his  own  dead  self  stretching  out  their  arms  to  him, 
calling  to  him  across  a  bottomless  abyss — and  to  know 
that  they  were  gone  from  him  forever,  and  he  writhing 
and  suffocating  in  the  mire  of  his  own  vileness  I 


CHAPTER  XXIIl 


Early  ia  the  fall  Jurgis  set  out  for  Chicago  again.  All 
bhe  joy  went  out  of  tramping  as  soon  as  a  man  could  not 
keep  warm  in  the  hay;  and,  like  many  thousands  of  others,  he 
deluded  himself  with  the  hope  that  by  coming  early  he  could 
avoid  the  rush.  He  brought  fifteen  dollars  with  him, 
hidden  away  in  one  of  his  shoes,  a  sum  which  had  been  saved 
from  the  saloon-keepers,  not  so  much  by  his  conscience, 
as  by  the  fear  which  filled  him  at  the  thought  of  being 
out  of  work  in  the  city  iu  the  winter-time. 

He  travelled  upon  the  railroad  with  several  other  men, 
hiding  in  freight-cars  at  night,  and  liable  to  be  thrown  off 
at  any  time,  regardless  of  the  speed  of  the  train.  When 
he  reached  the  city  he  left  the  rest,  for  he  had  money  and 
they  did  not,  and  he  meant  to  save  himself  in  this  fight. 
He  would  bring  to  it  all  the  skill  that  practice  had 
brought  him,  and  he  would  stand,  whoever  fell.  On 
fair  nights  he  would  sleep  in  the  park  or  on  a  truck  or  an 
empty  barrel  or  box,  and  when  it  was  rainy  or  cold  he 
would  stow  himself  upon  a  shelf  in  a  ten-cent  lodging- 
house,  or  pay  three  cents  for  the  privileges  of  a  “  squatter  ” 
in  a  tenement  hallway.  He  would  eat  at  free  lunches,  five 
cents  a  meal,  and  never  a  cent  more  —  so  he  might  keep 
alive  for  two  months  and  more,  and  in  that  time  he  would 
surely  find  a  job.  He  would  have  to  bid  farewell  to  his 
summer  cleanliness,  of  course,  for  he  would  come  out  of 
the  first  night’s  lodging  with  his  clothes  alive  with  vermin. 
There  was  no  place  in  the  city  where  he  could  wash  even 
his  face,  unless  he  went  down  to  the  lake-fr^n*  —  and 
there  it  would  soon  be  all  ice. 

265 


18 


266 


THE  JUNGLE 


First  he  went  to  the  steehmill  and  the  harvester-works, 
and  found  that  his  places  there  had  been  filled  long  ago. 
He  was  careful  to  keep  away  from  the  stockyards  — he 
was  a  single  man  now,  he  told  himself,  and  he  meant  to 
stay  one,  to  have  his  wages  for  his  own  when  he  got  a  job. 
He  began  the  long,  weary  round  of  factories  and  ware* 
houses,  tramping  all  day,  from  one  end  of  the  city  to  the 
other,  finding  everywhere  from  ten  to  a  hundred  men 
ahead  of  him.  He  watched  the  newspapers,  too  —  but  no 
longer  was  he  to  be  taken  in  by  smooth-spoken  agents. 
He  had  been  told  of  all  those  tricks  while  “on  the  road.” 

In  the  end  it  was  through  a  newspaper  that  he  got  a  job, 
after  nearly  a  month  of  seeking.  It  was  a  call  for  a  hun¬ 
dred  laborers,  and  though  he  thought  it  was  a  “  fake,”  he 
went  because  the  place  was  near  by.  He  found  a  line  of 
men  a  block  long,  but  as  a  wagon  chanced  to  come  out  of 
an  alley  and  break  the  line,  he  saw  his  chance  and  sprang 
to  seize  a  place.  Men  threatened  him  and  tried  to  throw 
him  out,  but  he  cursed  and  made  a  disturbance  to  attract  a 
policeman,  upon  which  they  subsided,  knowing  that  if  the 
latter  interfered  it  would  be  to  “  fire  ”  them  all. 

An  hour  or  two  later  he  entered  a  room  and  confronted 
a  big  Irishman  behind  a  desk, 

“  Ever  worked  in  Chicago  before  ?  ”  the  man  inquired ; 
and  whether  it  was  a  good  angel  that  put  it  into  Jurgis’s 
mind,  or  an  intuition  of  his  sharpened  wits,  he  was  moved 
to  answer,  “No,  sir.” 

“  Where  do  you  come  from 

“  Kansas  City,  sir.” 

“  Any  references  ?  ” 

“No,  sir.  I’m  just  an  unskilled  man.  I’ve  got  good 
arms.” 

“  I  want  men  for  hard  work  —  it’s  all  underground, 
digging  tunnels  for  telephones.  Maybe  it  won’t  suit 
you.” 

“  I’m  willing,  sir  —  anything  for  me.  What’s  th/w 
pay  ?  ” 

“  Fifteen  cents  an  hour,” 

“  I’m  willing,  sir.” 


THE  JUXGLE. 


267 


“All  right ;  go  back  there  and  give  your  name.*^ 

So  within  half  an  hour  he  was  at  work,  far  underneath 
the  streets  of  the  city.  The  tunnel  was  a  peculiar  one  for 
telephone-wires ;  it  was  about  eight  feet  high,  and  with 
a  level  floor  nearly  as  wide.  It  had  innumerable  branches 
—  a  perfect  spider-web  beneath  the  city  ;  J  urgis  walked 
over  half  a  mile  with  his  gang  to  the  place  where  they  were 
to  work.  Stranger  yet,  the  tunnel  was  lighted  by  elec¬ 
tricity,  and  upon  it  was  laid  a  double-tracked,  narrow- 
gauge  railroad  1 

But  Jurgis  was  not  there  to  ask  questions,  and  he  did 
not  give  the  matter  a  thought.  It  was  nearly  a  year  after¬ 
ward  that  he  finally  learned  the  meaning  of  this  whole 
affair.  The  City  Council  had  passed  a  quiet  and  innocent 
little  bill  allowing  a  company  to  construct  telephone  con¬ 
duits  under  the  city  streets;  and  upon  the  strength  of  this,  a 
great  corporation  had  proceeded  to  tunnel  all  Chicago  with 
a  system  of  railway  freight-subways.  In  the  city  there 
was  a  combination  of  employers,  representing  hundreds  of 
millions  of  capital,  and  formed  for  the  purpose  of  crushing 
the  labor  unions.  The  chief  union  which  troubled  it  was 
the  teamsters’  ;  and  when  these  freight  tunnels  were  com¬ 
pleted,  connecting  all  the  big  factories  and  stores  with  the 
railroad  depots,  they  would  have  the  teamsters’  union  by 
the  throat.  Now  and  then  there  were  rumors  and  mur¬ 
murs  in  the  Board  of  Aldermen,  and  once  there  was  a  com¬ 
mittee  to  investigate  —  but  each  time  another  small  fortune 
was  paid  over,  and  the  rumors  died  away  ;  until  at  last  the 
city  woke  up  with  a  start  to  find  the  work  completed. 
There  was  a  tremendous  scandal,  of  course  ;  it  was  found 
that  the  city  records  had  been  falsified  and  other  crimes 
committed,  and  some  of  Chicago’s  big  capitalists  got  into 
jail  —  figuratively  speaking.  The  aldermen  declared  that 
they  had  had  no  idea  of  it  all,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
main  entrance  to  the  work  had  been  in  the  rear  of  the 
saloon  of  one  of  them. 

It  was  in  a  newly  opened  cut  that  Jurgis  worked,  and  so 
he  knew  that  he  had  an  all-winter  job.  lie  was  so  rejoiced 
that  he  treated  himself  to  a  spree  that  night,  and  with  the 


268 


THE  JUNGLE 


balance  of  his  money  he  hired  himself  a  place  in  a  tene* 
ment-room,  where  he  slept  upon  a  big  home-made  straw 
mattress  along  with  four  other  working-men.  This  was 
one  dollar  a  week,  and  for  four  more  he  got  his  food  in  a 
boarding-house  near  his  work.  This  would  leave  him  four 
dollars  extra  each  week,  an  unthinkable  sum  for  him. 
At  the  outset  he  had  to  pay  for  his  digging  tools,  and  also 
to  buy  a  pair  of  heavy  boots,  since  his  shoes  were  falling 
to  pieces,  and  a  flannel  shirt,  since  the  one  he  had  worn  all 
summer  was  in  shreds.  He  spent  a  week  meditating 
whether  or  not  he  should  also  buy  an  overcoat.  There 
was  one  belonging  to  a  Hebrew  collar-button  pedler,  who 
had  died  in  the  room  next  to  him,  and  which  the  landlady 
was  holding  for  her  rent ;  in  the  end,  however,  Jurgis 
decided  to  do  without  it,  as  he  was  to  be  underground  by 
day  and  in  bed  at  night. 

This  was  an  unfortunate  decision,  however,  for  it  drove 
him  more  quickly  than  ever  into  the  saloons.  From  now 
on  Jurgis  worked  from  seven  o’clock  until  half-past  flve, 
with  half  an  hour  for  dinner  ;  which  meant  that  he  never 
saw  the  sunlight  on  week-days.  In  the  evenings  there 
was  no  place  for  him  to  go  except  a  bar-room  ;  no  place 
where  there  was  light  and  warmth,  where  he  could  hear  a 
little  music  or  sit  with  a  companion  and  talk.  He  had 
now  no  home  to  go  to  ;  he  had  no  affection  left  in  his  life 
—  only  the  pitiful  mockery  of  it  in  the  camaraderie  of 
vice.  On  Sundays  the  churches  were  open — but  where  was 
there  a  church  in  which  an  ill-sro.elling  working-man,  with 
vermin  crawling  upon  his  neck,  could  sit  without  seeing 
people  edge  away  and  look  annoyed  ?  He  had,  of  course, 
his  corner  in  a  close  though  unheated  room,  with  a  window 
opening  upon  a  blank  wall  two  feet  away  ;  and  also  he  had 
the  bare  streets,  with  the  winter  gales  sweeping  through 
them  ;  besides  this  he  had  only  the  saloons  —  and,  of 
course,  he  had  to  drink  to  stay  in  them.  If  he  drank  now 
and  then  he  was  free  to  make  himself  at  home,  to  gamble 
with  dice  or  a  pack  of  greasy  cards,  to  play  at  a  dingy 
pool-table  for  money,  or  to  look  at  a  beer-stained  pink 
^sporting  paner,”  with  pictures  of  murderers  and  half 


THE  JUNGLE 


269 


naked  women.  Ifc  was  for  such  pleasures  as  these  that  he 
spent  his  money  ;  and  such  was  his  life  during  the  six 
weeks  and  a  half  that  he  toiled  for  the  merchants  of 
Chicago,  to  enable  them  to  break  the  grip  of  their 
teamsters'  union. 

In  a  work  thus  carried  out,  not  much  thought  was  given 
to  the  welfare  of  the  laborers.  On  an  average,  the  tunnel¬ 
ling  cost  a  life  a  day  and  several  manglings ;  it  was  seldom, 
however,  that  more  than  a  dozen  or  two  men  heard  of  any 
one  accident.  The  work  was  all  done  by  the  new  boring- 
machinex’y,  with  as  little  blasting  as  possible ;  but  there 
would  be  falling  rocks  and  crushed  supports  and  pre¬ 
mature  explosions  —  and  in  addition  all  the  dangers  of 
railroading.  So  it  was  that  one  night,  as  Jurgis  was  on 
his  way  out  with  his  gang,  an  engine  and  a  loaded  car 
dashed  round  one  of  the  innumerable  right-angle  branches 
and  struck  him  upon  the  shoulder,  hurling  him  against 
the  concrete  wall  and  knocking  him  senseless. 

When  he  opened  his  eyes  again  it  was  to  the  clanging 
of  the  bell  of  an  ambulance.  He  was  lying  in  it,  covered 
by  a  blanket,  and  it  was  threading  its  way  slowly  through 
the  holiday-shopping  crowds.  They  took  him  to  the  county 
hospital,  where  a  young  surgeon  set  his  arm ;  then  he  was 
washed  and  laid  upon  a  bed  in  a  ward  with  a  score  or  two 
more  of  maimed  and  mangled  men. 

Jurgis  spent  his  Christmas  in  this  hospital,  and  it  was 
the  pleasantest  Christmas  he  had  had  in  America.  Every 
year  there  were  scandals  and  investigations  in  this  institu¬ 
tion,  the  newspapers  charging  that  doctors  were  allowed 
to  try  fantastic  experiments  upon  the  patients ;  but  J urgis 
knew  nothing  of  this  —  his  only  complaint  was  that  they 
used  to  feed  him  upon  tinned  meat,  which  no  man  who 
had  ever  worked  in  Packingtown  would  feed  to  his  dog. 
Jurgis  had  often  wondered  just  who  ate  the  canned  corned 
beef  and  “roast  beef”  of  the  stockyards;  now  he  began 
to  understand  —  that  it  was  what  you  might  call  “  graft- 
meat,”  put  up  to  be  sold  to  public  officials  and  contractors, 
and  eaten  by  soldiers  and  sailors,  prisoners  and  inmates  of 
institutions,  “  shanty-men  ”  and  gangs  of  railroad  laborers- 


270 


THE  JUNGLE 


Jurgis  was  ready  to  leave  the  hospital  at  the  end  of  two 
weeks.  This  did  not  mean  that  his  arm  was  strong  and 
that  he  was  able  to  go  back  to  work,  but  simply  that  he 
could  get  along  without  further  attention,  and  that  his 
place  was  needed  for  some  one  worse  off  than  he.  That 
he  was  utterly  helpless,  and  had  no  means  of  keeping  him¬ 
self  alive' ih  the  meantime,  was  something  which  dm  not 
concern  the  hospital  authorities,  nor  any  one  else  in  the 

city  .  ; 

As  it  chanced,  he  had  been  hufp  on  a  Monday,  and  had 
just  paid  for  his  last  week’s  board  and  his  room  rent,  and 
spent  nearly  all  the  balance  of  his  Saturday’s  pay.  He 
had  less  than  seventy-five  cents  in  his  pockets,  and  a 
dollar  and  a  lialf  due  him  for  the  day’s  work  he  had  done 
before  he  was  hurt.  He  might  possibly  have  sued  the 
company,  and  got  some  damages  for-  his  injuries,  but  he 
did  not  know  this,  and  it  was  not  the  company’s  business 
to  tell  him.  He  Avent  and  got  his  pay  and  his  tools,  which 
he  left  in  a  pawnshop  for  fifty  cents.  Then  he  went  to 
his  landlady,  who  had  rented  his  place  and  had  no  other 
for  him  ;  and  then  to  his  boarding-house  keeper,  who 
looked  him  over  and  questioned  him.  As  he  must  cer¬ 
tainly  be  helpless  for  a  couple  of  months,  and  had  boarded 
there  only  six  weeks,  she  decided  very  quickly  that  .it 
would  not  be  worth  the  risk  to  keep  him  on  trust.  ju. 

So  Jurgis  went  out  into  the  streets,  in  a  most  dreadflC! 
plight.  It  was  bitterly  cold,  and  a  heavy  snow  was  fall 
ing,  beating  into  his  face.  He  had  no  overcoat,  and  no 
place  to  go,  and  two  dollars  and  sixty-five  cents  in  his 
pocket,  with  the  certainty  that  he  could  not  earn  another 
cent  for  months.  The  snow  meant  no  chance  to  him  now  j 
he  must  walk  along  and  see  others  shovelling,  vigorous 
and  active  —  and  he  with  his  left  arm  bound  to  his  side  I 
He  could  not  hope  to  tide  himself  over  by  odd  jobs  of 
loading  trucks ;  he  could  not  even  sell  newspapers  or  carry 
satchels,  because  he  was  now  at  the  mercy  of  any  rival. 
Words  could  not  paint  the  terror  that  came  over  him 
as  he  realized  all  this.  He  was  like  a  wounded  animal  in 
the  forest  j  he  was  forced  to  compete  with  his  enemies 


THE  JUNGLE 


271 


upon  unequal  terms.  There  would  be  no  considera¬ 
tion  for  him  because  of  his  weakness  —  it  was  no  one’s 
business  to  help  him  in  such  distress,  to  make  the  fight 
the  least  bit  easier  for  him.  Even  if  he  took  to  begging, 
he  would  be  at  a  disadvantage,  for  reasons  which  he  was 
to  discover  in  good  time. 

In  the  beginning  he  could  not  think  of  anything  except 
getting  out  of  the  awful  cold.  He  went  into  one  of  the 
saloons  he  had  been  wont  to  frequent  and  bouglit  a  drink, 
and  then  stood  by  the  fire  shivering  and  waiting  to  be 
ordered  out.  According  to  an  unwritten  law,  the  buying 
a  drink  included  the  privilege  of  loafing  for  just  so 
long  ;  then  one  had  to  buy  another  drink  or  move  on. 
That  Jurgis  was  an  old  customer  entitled  him  to  a  some- 
v/hat  longei’  stop  ;  but  then  he  had  been  away  two  weeks, 
and  was  evidently  “  on  the  bum.”  He  might  plead  and 
tell  his  “hard-luck  story,”  but  that  would  not  help  him 
much  ;  a  saloon-keeper  who  was  to  be  moved  by  such 
means  would  soon  have  his  place  jammed  to  the  doors  with 
“  hoboes  ”  on  a  day  like  this. 

So  Jurgis  went  out  into  another  place,  and  paid  another 
nickel.  He  was  so  hungry  this  time  that  he  could  not 
resist  the  hot  beef-stew,  an  indulgence  which  cut  short  his 
stay  by  a  considerable  time.  When  he  was  again  told  to 
’•■'ove  on,  he  made  his  way  to  a  “tough”  place  in  the 
•nitvee”  district,  where  now  and  then  he  had  gone  with  a 
certain  rat-eyed  Bohemian  working-man  of  his  acquaint¬ 
ance,  seeking  a  woman.  It  Avas  Jurgis’s  vain  hope  that 
here  the  proprietor  would  let  him  remain  as  a  “sitter.” 
In  low-class  places,  in  the  dead  of  winter,  saloon-keepers 
would  often  allow  one  or  two  forlorn-looking  bums  who 
came  in  covered  with  snow  or  soaked  with  rain  to  sit  by 
the  fire  and  look  miserable  to  attract  custom.  A  working- 
man  would  come  in,  feeling  cheerful  after  his  day’s  work 
was  over,  and  it  would  trouble  him  to  have  to  take  his 
glass  with  such  a  sight  under  his  nose ;  and  so  he  would 
call  out :  “Hello,  Bub,  what’s  the  rnattei?  You  look  as 
if  you’d  been  up  against  it  !  ”  And  then  the  other  would 
begin  to  pour  out  some  tale  of  misery,  and  the  man  would 


272 


THE  JUNGLE 


say,  “  Come  have  a  glass,  and  maybe  thatll  brace  you  up,^ 
And  so  they  would  drink  together,  and  if  the  tramp  was 
sufficiently  wretched-looking,  or  good  enough  at  the  “gab,” 
they  might  have  two  ;  and  if  they  were  to  discover  that 
they  were  from  the  same  country,  or  had  lived  in  the  same 
city  or  worked  at  the  same  trade,  they  might  sit  down  at 
a  table  and  spend  an  hour  or  two  in  talk  —  and  before 
they  got  through  the  saloon-keeper  would  have  taken  in 
a  dollar.  All  of  this  might  seem  diabolical,  but  the  saloon¬ 
keeper  was  in  no  wise  to  blame  for  it.  He  was  in  the  same 
plight  as  the  manufacturer  who  has  to  adulterate  and 
misrepresent  his  product.  If  he  does  not,  some  one  else 
will ;  and  the  saloon-keeper,  unless  he  is  also  an  alderman, 
is  apt  to  be  in  debt  to  the  big  brewers,  and  on  the  verge 
of  being  sold  out. 

The  market  for  “sitters”  was  glutted  that  afternoon, 
however,  and  there  was  no  place  for  Jurgis.  In  all  he 
had  to  spend  six  nickels  in  keeping  a  shelter  over  him 
that  frightful  day,  and  then  it  was  just  dark,  and  the 
station-houses  would  not  open  until  midnight  I  At  the 
last  place,  however,  there  was  a  bartender  who  knew  him 
and  liked  him,  and  let  him  doze  at  one  of  the  tables  until 
the  boss  came  back  ;  and  also,  as  he  was  going  out,  the 
man  gave  him  a  tip,  —  on  the  next  block  there  was  a 
religious  revival  of  some  sort,  with  preaching  and  singing, 
and  hundreds  of  hoboes  would  go  there  for  the  shelter 
and  warmth. 

Jurgis  went  straightway,  and  saw  a  sign  hung  out, 
saying  that  the  door  would  open  at  seven-thirty  ;  then  he 
walked,  or  half  ran,  a  block,  and  hid  awhile  in  a  doorway 
and  then  ran  again,  and  so  on  until  the  hour.  At  the  end 
he  was  all  but  frozen,  and  fought  his  way  in  with  the  rest 
of  the  throng  (at  the  risk  of  having  his  arm  broken  again), 
and  got  close  to  the  big  stove. 

By  eight  o'clock  the  place  was  so  crowded  that  the 
speakers  ought  to  have  been  flattered ;  the  aisles  were 
filled  halfway  up,  and  at  the  door  men  were  packed 
tight  enough  to  walk  upon.  There  were  three  elderly 
gentlemen  in  black  upon  the  platform,  and  a  young  lady 


THE  JUNGLE 


273 


who  played  the  piano  in  front.  First  they  sang  a  hymn, 
and  then  one  of  the  three,  a  tall,  smooth-shaven  man,  very 
thin,  and  wearing  black  spectacles,  began  an  address. 
Jurgis  heard  smatterings  of  it,  for  the  reason  that  terror 
kept  him  awake  —  he  knew  that  he  snored  abominably, 
and  to  have  been  put  out  just  then  would  have  been  like 
a  sentence  of  death  to  him. 

The  evangelist  was  preaching  “  sin  and  redemption,’* 
the  infinite  grace  of  God  and  His  pardon  for  human 
frailtj'.  He  was  very  much  in  earnest,  and  he  meant 
well,  but  Jurgis,  as  he  listened,  found  his  soul  filled  with 
hatred.  What  did  he  know  about  sin  and  sulferhig  — 
with  his  smooth,  black  coat  and  his  neatly  starched  collar, 
his  body  warm,  and  his  belly  full,  and  money  in  his  pocket 
—  and  lecturing  men  who  were  struggling  for  their  lives, 
men  at  the  death-grapple  with  the  demon  powers  of  hun¬ 
ger  and  cold  I  —  This,  of  course,  was  unfair  ;  but  Jurgis 
felt  that  these  men  were  out  of  touch  with  the  life  they 
discussed,  that  they  were  unfitted  to  solve  its  problems  ; 
nay,  they  themselves  were  part  of  the  problem  —  they 
were  part  of  the  order  established  that  was  crushing  men 
down  and  beating  them  1  They  were  of  the  triumphant 
and  insolent  possessors ;  they  had  a  hall,  and  a  fire,  and 
food  and  clothing  and  money,  and  so  they  might  preach 
to  hungry  men,  and  the  hungry  men  must  be  humble  and 
listen  1  They  were  trying  to  save  their  souls  —  and  who 
but  a  fool  could  fail  to  see  that  all  that  was  the  matter 
with  their  souls  was  that  they  had  not  been  able  to  get  a 
decent  existence  for  their  bodies  ? 

At  eleven  the  meeting  closed,  and  the  desolate  audience 
filed  out  into  the  snow,  muttering  curses  up  on  the  few 
traitors  who  had  got  repentance  and  gone  upon  the  plat¬ 
form.  It  was  yet  an  hour  before  the  station-house  would 
open,  and  J urgis  had  no  overcoat  —  and  was  weak  from  a 
long  illness.  During  that  hour  he  nearly  perished.  Ha 
was  obliged  to  run  hard  to  keep  his  blood  moving  at  all 

and  then  he  came  back  to  the  station-house  and  found 
a  crowd  blocking  the  street  before  the  door  1  This  wa? 


274 


THE  JUNGLE 


in  the  month  of  January,  1904,  when  the  country  was  on 
the  verge  of  “  hard  times,”  and  the  newspapers  were  re> 
porting  the  shutting  down  of  factories  every  day  —  it  was 
estimated  that  a  million  and  a  half  of  men  were  thrown 
out  of  work  before  the  spring.  So  all  the  hiding-places 
of  the  city  were  crowded,  and  before  that  station-house 
door  men  fought  and  tore  each  other  like  savage  beasts. 
When  at  last  the  place  was  jammed  and  they  shut  the 
doors,  half  the  crowd  was  still  outside  ;  and  Jurgis,  with 
his  helpless  arm,  was  among  them.  There  was  no  choice 
then  but  to  go  to  a  lodging-house  and  spend  another  dime. 
It  really  broke  his  heart  to  do  this,  at  half-past  twelve 
o’clock,  after  he  had  wasted  the  night  at  the  meeting 
and  on  the  street.  He  would  be  turned  out  of  the  lodg¬ 
ing-house  promptly  at  seven  —  they  had  the  shelves  which 
served  as  bunks  so  contrived  that  they  could  be  dropped, 
and  any  man  who  was  slow  about  obeying  orders  could  be 
tumbled  to  the  floor. 

This  was  one  day,  and  the  cold  spell  lasted  for  fourteen 
of  them.  At  the  end  of  six  days  every  cent  of  Jurgis 's 
money  was  gone  ;  and  then  he  went  out  on  the  streets 
to  beg  for  his  life. 

He  would  begin  as  soon  as  the  business  of  the  city  was 
moving.  He  would  sally  forth  from  a  saloon,  and,  after 
making  sure  there  was  no  policeman  in  sight,  would  ap¬ 
proach  every  likely-looking  person  who  passed  him,  telling 
his  woful  story  and  pleading  for  a  nickel  or  a  dims.  Then 
when  he  got  one,  he  would  dart  round  the  corner  and  re¬ 
turn  to  his  base  to  get  warm ;  and  his  victim,  seeing  him 
do  this,  would  go  away,  vowing  that  he  would  never  give 
a  cent  to  a  beggar  again.  The  victim  never  paused  to 
ask  where  else  Jurgis  could  have  gone  under  the  circum¬ 
stances where  he,  the  victim,  would  have  gone.  At 
the  saloon  Jurgis  could  not  only  get  more  food  and  better 
food  than  he  could  buy  in  any  restaurant  for  the  same 
■  money,  but  a  drink  in  the  bargain  to  warm  him  up.  Also 
j  j  he  could  find  a  comfortable  seat  by  a  fire,  and  could  chat 
1  i  with  a  companion  until  he  was  as  warm  as  toast.  At  the 
'  ^aloon,  too,  he  felt  at  home.  Part  of  the  saloon-keeper’s 


THE  JUNGLE 


275 


business  was  to  offer  a  home  and  refreshments  to  beggars 
in  exchange  for  the  proceeds  of  their  foragings ;  and  was 
there  any  one  else  in  the  whole  city  who  would  do  this  — 
would  the  victim  have  done  it  himself  ? 

Poor  Jurgis  might  have  been  expected  to  m.ah;e  a  suc¬ 
cessful  beggar.  He  was  just  out  of  the  hospital,  and  des¬ 
perately  sick-loohing,  and  with  a  helpless  arm  ;  also  ne 
had  no  overcoat,  and  shivered  pitifully.  But,  alas,  it 
was  again  the  case  of  the  honest  merchant,  who  finds  that 
the  genuine  and  unadulterated  article  is  driven  to  the 
wall  by  the  artistic  counterfeit.  Jurgis,  as  a  beggar, 
was  simply  a  blundering  amateur  in  competition  with 
organized  and  scientific  professionalism.  He  was  just  out 
of  the  hospital  —  but  the  story  was  worn  threadbare,  and 
how  could  he  prove  it  ?  He  had  his  arm  in  a  sling  —  and 
it  was  a  device  a  regular  beggar’s  little  boy  would  have 
scorned.  He  was  pale  and  shivering  —  but  they  were 
made  up  with  cosmetics,  and  had  studied  the  art  of  chat¬ 
tering  their  teeth.  As  to  his  being  v/ithout  an  overcoat, 
among  them  you  would  meet  men  you  could  swear  had  on 
nothing  but  a  ragged  linen,  duster  and  a  pair  of  cotton 
trousers  —  so  cleverly  had  they  concealed  the  several  suits 
of  all-wool  underwear  beneath.  Mao}^  of  these  profes¬ 
sional  mendicants  had  comfortable  homes,  and  families, 
and  thousands  of  dollars  in  the  bank  ;  some  of  them  had 
retired  upon  their  earnings,  and  gone  into  the  business  of 
fitting  out  and  doctoring  others,  or  working  children  at 
the  trade.  There  were  some  who  had  both  their  arms 
bound  tightlj'’  to  their  sides,  and  padded  stumps  in  theii 
sleeves,  and  a  sick  child  hired  to  carry  a  cup  for  them. 
There  were  some  who  had  no  legs,  and  pushed  themselves 
upon  a  wheeled  platform  —  some  who  had  been  favored 
with  blindness,  and  were  led  by  pretty  little  dogs  Soms 
less  fortunate  had  mutilated  themselves  or  burned  them¬ 
selves,  or  had  brought  horrible  sores  upon  themselves  with 
chemicals ;  you  might  suddenly  encounter  upon  the  stieel 
a  man  holding  out  to  you  a  finger  rotting  and  discolored 
with  gangrene  —  or  one  with  livid  scarlet  wounds  half 
escaped  from  their  filthy  bandages.  These  desperate  onee 


276 


THE  JUNGLE 


were  the  dregs  of  the  city’s  cesspools,  wretches  who  hid  at 
night  in  the  rain-soaked  cellars  of  old  ramshackle  tene- 
ments,  in  “  stale-beer  dives  ”  and  opium  joints,  with  aban¬ 
doned  women  in  the  last  stages  of  the  harlot’s  progress  — 
women  who  had  been  kept  by  Chinamen  and  turned  away 
at  last  to  die.  Every  day  the  police  net  would  drag  hun¬ 
dreds  of  them  off  the  streets,  and  in  the  Detention  Hospi¬ 
tal  you  might  see  them,  herded  together  in  a  miniature 
inferno,  with  hideous,  beastly  faces,  bloated  and  leprous 
with  disease,  laughing,  shouting,  screaming  in  all  stages 
of  drunkenness,  barking  like  dogs,  gibbering  like  apes, 
raving  and  tearing  themselves  in  delirium^ 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

In’  the  face  of  all  his  handicaps,  Jurgis  was  obliged  to 
make  the  price  of  a  lodging,  and  of  a  drink  every  hour  or 
two,  under  penalty  of  freezing  to  death.  Day  after  day 
he  roamed  about  in  the  arctic  cold,  his  soul  filled  full  of 
bitterness  and  despair.  He  saw  the  world  of  civilization 
then  more  plainly  than  ever  he  had  seen  it  before ;  a  world 
in  which  nothing  counted  but  brutal  might,  an  order  de¬ 
vised  by  those  who  possessed  it  for  the  subjugation  of 
those  who  did  not.  He  was  one  of  the  latter;  and  all 
outdoors,  all  life,  was  to  him  one  colossal  prison,  which 
he  paced  like  a  pent-up  tiger,  trying  one  bar  after  another, 
and  finding  them  all  beyond  his  power.  He  had  lost  in 
the  fierce  battle  of  greed,  and  so  was  doomed  to  be  exter¬ 
minated  ;  and  all  society  was  busied  to  see  that  he  did  not 
escape  the  sentence.  Everywhere  that  he  turned  were 
prison-bars,  and  hostile  eyes  following  him ;  the  well-fed, 
sleek  policemen,  from  whose  glances  he  shrank,  and  who 
seemed  to  grip  their  clubs  more  tightly  when  they  saw 
him ;  the  saloon-keepers,  who  never  ceased  to  watch  him 
while  he  was  in  their  places,  who  were  jealous  of  every 
moment  he  lingered  after  he  had  paid  his  money;  the 
hurrying  throngs  upon  the  streets,  who  were  deaf  to  his 
entreaties,  oblivious  of  his  very  existence  —  and  savage 
and  contemptuous  when  he  forced  himself  upon  them. 
They  had  their  own  affairs,  and  there  was  no  place  for  him 
among  them.  There  was  no  place  for  him  anywhere  — 
every  direction  he  turned  his  gaze,  this  fact  was  forced 
upon  him.  Everything  was  built  to  express  it  to  him : 
the  residences,  with  their  heavy  walls  and  bolted  doors, 
and  basement-windows  barred  with  iron  ;  the  great  ware 

277 


278 


THE  JU]SfGLE 


houses  filled  with  the  products  of  the  whole  world,  and 
guarded  by  iron  shutters  and  heavy  gates  ;  the  banks  with 
their  unthinkable  billions  of  wealth,  all  buried  in  safes 
and  vaults  of  steel. 

And  then  one  day  there  befell  Jurgis  the  one  adventure 
of  his  life.  It  was  late  at  night,  and  he  had  failed  to  get 
the  price  of  a  lodging.  Snow  was  failing,  and  he  had  been 
out  so  long  that  he  was  covered  vrith  it,  and  was  chilled 
to  the  bone.  He  was  working  among  the  theatre  crowds, 
flitting  here  and  there,  taking  large  chances  with  the 
police,  in  his  desperation  half  hoping  to  be  arrested. 
When  he  saw  a  blue-coat  start  toward  him,  however,  his 
heart  failed  him,  and  he  dashed  down  a  side  street  and 
fled  a  couple  of  blocks.  When  he  stopped  again  he  saw 
a  man  coming  toward  him,  and  placed  himself  in  his 
path. 

“  Please,  sir,”  he  began,  in  the  usual  formula,  “  will  you 
give  me  the  price  of  a  lodging  ?  I’ve  had  a  broken  arm, 
and  I  can’t  work,  and  I’ve  not  a  cent  in  my  pocket.  I’m  an 
honest  working-man,  sir,  and  I  never  begged  before.  It’s 
not  my  fault,  sir  ” 

Jurgis  usually  went  on  until  he  was  interrupted,  but 
this  man  did  not  interrupt,  and  so  at  last  he  came  to  a 
breathless  stop.  The  other  had  halted,  and  Jurgis  sud¬ 
denly  noticed  that  he  stood  a  little  unsteadily.  “  Whuzzat 
you  say  ?  ”  he  queried  suddenly,  in  a  thick  voice. 

Jurgis  began  again,  speaking  more  slowly  and  dis¬ 
tinctly  ;  before  he  was  half  through  the  other  put  out  his 
hand  and  rested  it  upon  his  shoulder.  “  Poor  ole  chappie  I  ” 
he  said.  “  Been  up  —  hie  —  up  — against  it,  hey  ?  ” 

Then  he  lurched  toward  Jurgis,  and  the  hand  upon  his 
shoulder  became  an  arm  about  his  neck.  “Up  against  it 
myself,  ole  sport,”  he  said.  “She’s  a  hard  ole  world.” 

They  were  close  to  a  lamp  post,  and  Jurgis  got  a  glimpse 
of  the  other.  He  was  a  young  fellow  —  not  much  over 
eighteen,  with  a  handsome  boyish  face.  He  wore  a  silk  hat 
and  a  rich  soft  overcoat  with  a  fur  collar  i  and  he  smiled 
at  Jurgis  with  benignant  sympathy.  “  I'm  hard  up,  too. 


THE  JTOGLE 


279 


my  goo  fren’,”  he  said.  “  I’ve  got  cruel  parents,  or  I’d  set 
you  up.  Whuzzamatter  wliizyer  ?  ” 

“I’ve  been  in  the  hospital." 

“  Hospital !  ’’  exclaimed  the  young  fellow,  still  smiling 
sweetly,  “  thass  too  bad  I  Same’s  my  Aunt  Polly  —  hie 
— my  Aunt  Polly’s  in  the  hospital,  too  —  ole  auntie’s  been 
havin’  twins  1  Whuzzamatter  whiz  you?'^ 

“  I’ve  got  a  broken  arm  —  ’’  Jurgis  began. 

“  So,’*  said  the  other,  sympathetically.  “  That  ain’t  so 
bad  —  you  get  over  that.  I  wish  somebody’s  break  my 
arm,  ole  chappie  —  damfidon’t  J  Then  they’s  treat  me 
better  —  hie  —  hole  me  up,  ole  sport  1  W  huzzit  you 
wamme  do?*’ 

“  I’m  hungry,  sir,"  said  Jurgis. 

“  Hungry  !  Why  don’t  you  hassome  supper?'* 

“  I’ve  got  no  money,  sir.’* 

“No  money  !  Ho,  ho  —  less  be  chums,  ole  boy— -jess 
like  me!  No  money,  either,  —  a’most  busted!  Why 
don’t  you  go  home,  then,  same’s  me  ?’’ 

“I  haven’t  any  home,”  said  Jurgis. 

“No  home  I  Stranger  in  the  city,  hey  ?  Goo’  God, 
thass  bad  !  Better  come  home  wiz  me  —  yes,  by  Harry, 
thass  the  trick,  you’ll  come  home  an’  hassome  supper — hie 

—  wizmel  Awful  lonesome— -nobody  home  !  Guv’ner 
gone  abroad  —  Bubby  on’s  honeymoon  —  Polly  havin' 
twins  —  e very  damn  soul  gone  away  I  N uff -—hie  —  nuft 
to  drive  a  teller  to  drink,  I  say  !  Only  ole  Ham  standin’ 
by,  passin’  plates  —  damfican  eat  like  that,  no  sir  !  The 
club  for  me  every  time,  my  boy,  I  say.  But  then  they 
won’t  lemme  sleep  there  —  guv’ner’s  orders,  by  Harry  — 
home  every  night,  sir  I  Ever  hear  anythin*  like  that  ? 
'Every  mornin’  do?’  I  asked  him.  ‘No,  sir,  every  night, 
or  no  allowance  at  all,  sir.*  Thass  my  guv’ner  —  hie  — 
hard  as  nails,  by  Harry  1  Tole  ole  Ham  to  watch  me,  too 

—  servants  spyin’  on  me  —  whuzyer  think  that,  my  fren’? 
A  nice,  quiet  —  hie  —  good-hearted  young  feller  like  me, 
an’  his  daddy  can’t  go  to  Europe  — hup! — an’  leave  him 
in  peace  I  Ain’t  that  a  shame,  sir?  An*  I  gotter  go  home 
every  evenin'  an’  miss  ail  the  fun,  by  Harry  1  Thass 


280 


XHE  JUNGLE 


whuzzamatter  now  —  thass  why  I’m  here  !  Hadda  come 
away  an’  leave  Kitty  —  hie  —  left  her  cryin’,  too  —  whuj ja 

think  of  that,  ole  sport?  ‘  Lemme  go,  Kittens,’  says  I _ 

’  come  early  an’  often  —  I  go  where  duty  —  hie — ealls  me. 
Farewell,  farewell,  my  own  true  love  —  farewell,  fare' 
we-hell,  my -own-true-love  I  ’  ” 

This  last  was  a  song,  and  the  young  gentleman’s  voiee 
rose  mournful  and  wailing,  while  he  swung  upon  Jurgis’s 
ueek.  The  latter  was  glaneing  about  nervously,  lest  some 
one  should  approaeh.  They  were  still  alone,  however. 

“  But  I  came  all  right,  all  right,”  continued  the  young¬ 
ster,  aggressively.  “I  can  —  hie  —  I  can  have  my  own 
way  when  I  want  it,  by  Harry  —  Freddie  Jones  is  a  hard 
man  to  handle  when  he  gets  goin’  1  ‘No,  sir,’  says  I, 
‘  by  thunder,  and  1  don’t  need  anybody  goin’  home  with 
me,  either  —  whujja  take  me  for,  hey?  Think  I’m  drunk, 
dontcha,  hey  ?  —  I  know  you  I  But-  I’m  no  more  drunk 
than  you  are,  Kittens,’  says  I  to  her.  And  then  says  she, 
‘  Thass  true,  Freddie  dear  ’  (she’s  a  smart  one,  is  Kitty), 
‘  but  I’m  stayin’  in  the  flat,  an’  you’re  goin’  out  into  the 
cold,  cold  night  I  *  ‘  Put  it  in  a  pome,  lovely  Kitty,’  says 
I.  ‘No  jokin’,  Freddie,  my  boy,’  says  she.  ‘Lemme 
call  a  cab  now,  like  a  good  dear  ’  —  but  I  can  call  my  own 
cabs,  dontcha  fool  yourself  —  I  know  what  I’m  a-doin’, 
you  bet  I  Say,  my  fren’,  whatcha  say — willye  come  home 
an’  see  me,  an’  hassome  supper?  Come  ’long  like  a  good 
feller  —  don’t  be  haughty  1  You’re  up  against  it,  same 
as  me,  an’  you  can  unnerstan’  a  feller  ;  your  heart’s  in  the 
right  place,  by  Harry  —  come  ’long,  ole  chappie,  an’  we’ll 
light  up  the  house,  an’  have  some  fizz,  an’  we’ll  raise  hell, 
we  will  —  whoop-la  I  S’long’s  I’m  inside  the  house  I  can 
do  as  I  please  —  the  guv’ner’s  own  very  orders,  b’God  I 
Hip  I  hip  I  ” 

They  had  started  down  the  street,  arm  in  arm,  the  young 
man  pushing  Jurgis  along,  half  dazed.  Jurgis  was  try¬ 
ing  to  think  what  to  do  —  he  knew  he  could  not  pass  any 
crowded  place  with  his  new  acquaintance  Avithout  attract¬ 
ing  attention  and  being  stopped.  It  was  only  because  of 
the  falling  snow  that  people  who  passed  here  did  not  noti  as 
imything  wrongc 


THE  JUNGLE 


281 


Suddenly,  therefore,  Jurgis  stopped.  **  Is  it  very  far  ? 
he  inquired. 

**  Not  very,”  said  the  other.  “  Tired,  are  you,  though  ? 
Well,  we’ll  ride  —  whatcha  say  ?  Good  I  Call  a  cab  !  ” 

And  then,  gripping  Jurgis  tight  with  one  hand,  the 
young  fellow  began  searching  his  pockets  with  the  other. 
“  You  call,  ole  sport,  an’  I’ll  pay,”  he  suggested.  “  How’s 
that,  hey  ?  ” 

And  he  pulled  out  from  somewhere  a  big  roll  of  bills. 
It  was  more  money  than  Jurgis  had  ever  seen  in  his  life 
before,  and  he  stared  at  it  with  startled  eyes. 

“Looks  like  a  lot,  hey?  ’’said  Master  Freddie,  fumbling 
with  it.  “Fool  you,  though,  ole  chappie  —  they’re  all 
little  ones  I  I’ll  be  busted  in  one  week  more,  sure  thing  — 
word  of  honor.  An’  not  a  cent  more  till  the  first  —  hie 

—  guv’ner’s  orders  —  hie  —  not  a  cent,  by  Harry!  Nuff 
to  set  a  feller  crazy,  it  is.  I  sent  him  a  cable  this  af’noon 

—  thass  one  reason  more  why  I’m  goin’  home.  ‘  Hangin’ 
on  the  verge  of  starvation,’  I  says — ‘for  the  honor  of  the 
family  —  hie  —  sen’  me  some  bread.  Hunger  will  compel 
me  to  join  you.  —  Freddie.’  Thass  what  I  wired  him,  by 
Harry,  an’  I  mean  it  —  I’ll  run  away  from  school,  b’God, 
if  he  don’t  sen’  me  some.” 

After  this  fashion  the  young  gentleman  continued  to 
prattle  on  —  and  meantime  Jurgis  was  trembling  with 
excitement.  He  might  grab  that  wad  of  bills  and  be  out 
of  sight  in  the  darkness  before  the  other  could  collect  his 
wits.  Should  he  do  it  ?  What  better  had  he  to  hope  for, 
if  he  waited  longer?  But  Jurgis  had  never  committed  a 
crime  in  his  life,  and  now  he  hesitated  half  a  second  too 
long.  “  Freddie  ”  got  one  bill  loose,  and  then  stuffed  the 
rest  back  into  his  trousers’  pocket. 

“Here,  ole  man,”  he  said,  “you  take  it.”  He  held  it 
out  fluttering.  They  were  in  front  of  a  saloon;  and  by 
the  light  of  the  window  Jurgis  saw  that  it  was  a  hundred- 
dollar  bill  I 

“You  take  it,”  the  other  repeated.  “Pay  the  cabbie 
an'  keep  the  change  —  I’ve  got  —  hie  —  no  head  for  bush 
nesBr  Guv'ner  says  so  hisself,  an’  the  guv'ner  knows  — 

19 


282 


THE  JUJNGLB 


the  guv'ner’s  got  a  head  for  business,  you  bet  1  ‘  All  rights 
guv’ner,’  I  told  him,  ‘  you  run  the  show,  and  I’ll  take  the 
tickets  I  ’  An’  so  he  set  Aunt  Polly  to  watch  me  — hie— • 
an’  now  Polly’s  off  in  the  hospital  havin’  twins,  an’  me  out 
raisin’  Cain  !  Hello,  there  I  Hey  I  Call  him  I  ” 

A  cab  was  driving  by ;  and  Jurgis  spi'ang  and  called, 
and  it  swung  round  to  the  curb.  Master  Freddie 
clambered  in  with  some  difficulty,  and  Jurgis  had  started 
to  follow,  when  the  driver  shouted :  “Hi,  there  I  Get 
out  —  you  1  ” 

Jurgis  hesitated,  and  was  half  obeying  ;  but  his  com¬ 
panion  broke  out ;  “  Whuzzat  ?  Whuzzamatter  wiz  you, 
hey?” 

And  the  cabbie  subsided,  and  Jurgis  climbed  in.  Then 
Freddie  gave  a  number  on  the  Lake  Shore  Drive,  and  the 
carriage  started  away.  The  youngster  leaned  back  and 
snuggled  up  to  Jurgis,  murmuring  contentedly;  in  half 
a  minute  he  was  sound  asleep.  J  urgis  sat  shivering,  specu¬ 
lating  as  to  whether  he  might  not  still  be  able  to  get  hold 
of  the  roll  of  bills.  Fie  was  afraid  to  try  to  go  through 
his  companion’s  pockets,  however ;  and  besides,  the  cabbie 
might  be  on  the  watch.  He  had  the  hundred  safe,  and  he 
would  have  to  be  content  with  that. 

At  the  end  of  half  an  hour  or  so  the  cab  stopped.  They 
were  out  on  the  water-front,  and  from  the  east  a  freezing 
gale  was  blowing  off  the  ice-bound  lake,  “  Here  we  are,” 
called  the  cabbie,  and  Jurgis  av/akened  his  companion. 

Master  Freddie  sat  up  with  a  start 

“  Hello  1  ”  he  said.  “  Where  are  we  ?  Whuzzis  ?  Who 
are  you,  hey  ?  Oh,  yes,  sure  nuff !  Mos’  forgot  you  — 

—  hie  —  ole  chappie  I  Home,  are  we  ?  Lessee  I  Br-r-f 

—  it’s  cold!  Yes  —  come  ’long  —  we’re  home  —  be  it 
ever  so  —  hie  —  humble  I  ” 

Before  them  there  loomed  an  enormous  granite  pile,  set 
far  back  irom  the  street,  and  oeeupying  a  whole  block. 
By  the  light  of  the  driveway  lamps  Jurgis  could  see  that 
it  had  towers  and  huge  gables,  like  a  meffiseval  castle.  He 
thought  that  the  young  fellow  must  have  made  a  mistake 


THE  JUNGLE 


283 


—  it  was  inconceivable  to  him  that  any  person  could  have 
a  home  like  a  hotel  or  the  city  hall.  But  he  followed  in 
silence,  and  they  went  up  the  long  flight  of  steps,  arm  in 
arm. 

“  There’s  a  button  here,  ole  sport,”  said  Master  Freddie. 
“  Hole  my  arm  while  I  find  her  J  Steady,  now — oh,  yes, 
here  she  is  I  Saved  !  ” 

A  bell  rang,  and  in  a  few  seconds  the  door  was  opened. 
A  man  in  blue  livery  stood  holding  it,  and  gazing  before 
him,  silent  as  a  statue. 

They  stood  for  a  moment  blinking  in  the  light.  Then 
Jurgis  felt  his  companion  pulling,  and  he  stepped  in,  and 
the  blue  automaton  closed  the  door.  Jurgis’s  heart  was 
beating  wildly ;  it  was  a  bold  thing  for  him  to  do  —  into 
what  strange  unearthly  place  he  w’as  venturing  he  had  no 
idea.  Aladdin  entering  his  cave  could  not  have  been  more 
excited. 

The  place  where  he  stood  was  dimly  lighted ;  but  he 
could  see  a  vast  hall,  with  pillars  fading  into  the  darkness 
above,  and  a  great  staircase  opening  at  the  far  end  of  it. 
The  floor  was  of  tesselated  marble,  smooth  as  glass,  and 
from  the  walls  strange  shapes  loomed  out,  woven  into  huge 
portieres  in  rich,  harmonious  colors,  or  gleaming  from 
paintings,  wonderful  and  mysterious-looking  in  the  half- 
light,  purpL  and  red  and  golden,  like  sunset  glimmers  in 
8  shadowy  forest. 

The  man  in  livery  had  moved  silently  toward  them  5 
Master  Freddie  took  off  his  hat  and  handed  it  to  him,  and 
then,  letting  go  of  Jurgis’s  arm,  tried  to  get  out  of  his 
overcoat.  After  two  or  three  attempts  he  accomplished 
this,  with  the  lackey’s  help  ;  and  meantime  a  second  man 
had  approached,  a  tall  and  portly  personage,  solemn  as  an 
executioner.  He  bore  straight  down  upon  Jurgis,  who 
shrank  away  nervously ;  he  seized  him  by  the  arm  without 
ft  word,  and  started  toward  the  door  with  him.  Then 
suddenly  came  Master  Freddie’s  voice,  “  Hamilton  !  My 
fren’  will  remain  wiz  me.” 

The  man  paused  and  half  released  Jurgis.  “  Come  long 
i»le  chappie,  said  the  other,  and  Jurgis  started  toward  him 


284 


THE  JOTGLE 


“  Master  Frederick  !  ”  exclaimed,  the  mano 

“  See  that  the  cabbie  ^ —  hie  —  is  paid,”  was  the  other’s 
response;  and  he  linked  his  arm  in  Jurgis’s.  Jurgis  was 
about  to  say,  “  I  have  the  money  for  him,”  but  he  restrained 
himself.  The  stout  man  in  uniform  signalled  to  the  other, 
who  went  out  to  the  cab,  while  he  followed  J  urgis  and  his 
young  master. 

They  went  down  the  great  hall,  and  then  turned.  Be¬ 
fore  them  were  two  huge  doors. 

“  Hamilton,”  said  Master  Freddie. 

“Well,  sir?  ”  said  the  other. 

“  Whuzzamatter  wizze  dinin’-room  doors  ?*'’ 

“Nothing  is  the  matter,  sir.” 

“  Then  why  dontcha  openum  ?  ” 

The  man  rolled  them  back  ;  another  vista  lost  itself  in 
the  darkness.  “  Lights,”  commanded  Master  Freddie  ;  and 
the  butler  pressed  a  button,  and  a  flood  of  brilliant  in¬ 
candescence  streamed  from  above,  half  blinding  Jurgis. 
He  stared ;  and  little  by  little  he  made  out  the  great 
apartment,  with  a  domed  ceiling  from  which  the  light 
poured,  and  walls  that  were  one  enormous  painting  — 
nymphs  and  dryads  dancing  in  a  flower-strewn  glade  — 
Diana  with  her  hounds  and  horses,  dashing  headlong 
through  a  mountain  streamlet  —  a  group  of  maidens  bath¬ 
ing  in  a  forest-pool  —  all  life-size,  and  so  real  chat  Jurgis 
thought  that  it  was  some  work  of  enchantment,  that  he 
was  in  a  dream-palace.  Then  his  eye  passed  to  the  long 
table  in  the  centre  of  the  hall,  a  table  black  as  ebony,  and 
gleaming  with  wrought  silver  and  gold.  In  the  centre  of 
it  was  a  huge  carven  bowl,  with  the  glistening  gleam  of 
ferns  and  the  red  and  purple  of  rare  orchids,  glowing  from 
a  light  hidden  somewhere  in  their  midst. 

“  This’s  the  dinin’-room,”  observed  Master  Freddie. 
“  How  you  like  it,  hey,  ole  sport  ?  ” 

He  always  insisted  on  having  an  answer  to  his  remarks, 
leaning  over  Jurgis  and  smiling  into  his  face.  Jurgis 
liked  it. 

“  Rummy  ole  place  to  feed  in  all  ’lone,  though,”  wa.^’ 
1^‘reddie’s  comment  —  “  rummy’s  hell !  Whuzya  think, 


THE  JUNGLE 


285 


hey  ?  ^  Then  another  idea  occurred  to  him  and  he  went 
on,  without  waiting:  “Maybe  you  never  saw  anything  — 
hie  —  like  this  ’fore  ?  Hey,  ole  chappie  ?  ” 

“No,”  said  Jurgis. 

“  Come  from  country,  maybe  — hey  ?  ” 

“  Yes,”  said  Jurgis. 

“  Aha!  I  thosso  I  Lossa  folks  from  country  never  saw 
such  a  place.  Guv’ner  brings  ’em  —  free  show  — -  hie 

—  reg’lar  circus!  Go  home  tell  folks  about  it.  Ole 
man  Jones’s  place  —  Jones  the  packer- — beef-trust  man. 
Made  it  all  out  of  hogs,  too,  damn  ole  scoundrel.  Now  we 
see  where  our  pennies  go  —  rebates,  an’  private-car  lines 

—  hie  —  by  Harry!  Bully  place,  though  —  worth  seein’  I 
Ever  hear  of  Jones  the  packer,  hey,  ole  chappie  ?  ” 

Jurgis  had  started  involuntarily ;  the  other,  whose  sharp 
eyes  missed  nothing,  demanded:  “ Whuzzamatter,  hey? 
Heard  of  him  ?  ” 

And  Jurgis  managed  to  stammer  out :  “I  have  worked 
for  him  in  tlie  yards.” 

“What!”  cried  Master  Freddie,  with  a  yell.  '•'■You! 
In  the  yards?  Ho,  ho!  Why,  say,  thass  good !  Shake 
hands  on  it,  ole  man  —  by  Harry  !  Guv’ner  ought  to  be 
here  —  glad  to  see  you.  Great  fren’s  with  the  men,  guv’¬ 
ner —  labor  an’  capital,  commun’ty  ’f  int’rests,  an’  all  that 

—  liic !  Funny  things  happen  in  this  world,  don’t  they, 
ole  man?  Hamilton,  lemme  interduce  you  —  fren’  the 
family  —  ole  fren’  the  guv’ner’s  —  works  in  the  yards. 
Come  to  spend  the  night  wiz  me,  Hamilton  —  have  a  hot 

time.  My  fren’,  Mr. - whuzya  name,  ole  chappie  ?  Tell 

us  your  name.” 

“  Rudkus  ~  Jurgis  Rudkus.” 

“My  fren’,  Mr.  Rudnose,  Hamilton  —  shake  ban’s.” 

The  stately  butler  bowed  his  head,  but  made  not  a 
sound;  and  suddenly  Master  Freddie  pointed  an  eager 
finger  at  him.  “  I  know  whuzzamatter  wiz  you,  Hamilton 

—  lay  you  a  dollar  I  know!  You  think  —  hie  —  you 
think  I’m  drunk !  Hey,  now?  ” 

And  the  butler  again  bowed  his  head.  “  Yes,  sir,”  he 
said,  at  which  Master  Freddie  hung  tightly  upon  Jurgis’s 


THE  JUNGLE 


li86 

neck  and  went  into  a  fit  of  laughter.  “  Hamilton,  you 
damn  ole  scoundrel,”  he  roared,  “I’ll  ’scharge  you  for  im¬ 
pudence,  you  see  T  I  don’t !  Ho,  ho,  ho !  I’m  drunk ! 
Ho,  ho !  ” 

The  two  waited  until  his  fit  had  spent  itself,  to  see 
what  new  whim  would  seize  him.  “  Whatcha  wanta  do  ?  ” 
he  queried  suddenly.  “  Wanta  see  the  place,  ole  chappie  ? 
W  amine  play  the  guv’ner  —  show  you  roun’  ?  State 
parlors  —  Looee  Cans  —  Looee  Sez  —  chairs  cost  three 
thousand  apiece.  Tea-room  —  Maryanntnet  —  picture  of 
shepherds  dancing  —  Ruysdael — twenty-three  thousan’ ! 
Ball-room  —  balc’ny  pillars — hie — imported — special  ship 

—  sixty-eight  thousan’ !  Ceilin’  painted  in  Rome — whuz- 
zat  feller’s  name,  Hamilton-— Mattatoni  ?  Macaroni?  Then 
this  place  —  silver  bowl — Benvenuto  Cellini  —  rummy 
ole  Dago!  An’  the  organ  —  thirty  thousan’  dollars,  sir 

—  starter  up,  Hamilton,  let  Mr.  Rednose  hear  it.  No 

—  never  mind  —  clean  forgot  —  says  he’s  hungry,  Hamil¬ 
ton  —  less  have  some  supper.  Only  —  hie  —  don’t  less 
have  it  here  —  come  up  to  my  place,  ole  sport  —  nice 
an’  cosy.  This  way  —  steady  now,  don’t  slip  on  the  floor. 
Hamilton,  we’ll  have  a  cole  spread,  an’  some  fizz  —  don’t 
leave  out  the  fizz,  by  Harry.  We’ll  have  some  of  the 
eighteen-thirty  Madeira.  Hear  me,  sir  ?  ” 

“  Yes,  sir,”  said  the  butler,  “  but,  Master  Frederick,  your 
father  left  orders  —  ” 

And  Master  Frederick  drev/  himself  up  to  a  stately 
height.  “  My  father’s  orders  were  left  to  me  —  hie  — •  an’ 
not  to  you,”  he  said.  Then,  clasping  Jurgis  tightly  by 
the  neck,  he  staggered  out  of  the  room ;  on  the  way  an¬ 
other  idea  occurred  to  him,  and  he  asked :  “  Any  —  hie 

—  cable  message  for  me,  Hamilton  ?  ” 

“  No,  sir,”  said  the  butler, 

“  Guv’ner  must  be  travellin’.  An’  how’s  the  twins, 
Hamilton  ?  ” 

“They  are  doing  well,  sir.” 

“Good!”  said  Master  Freddie;  and  added  fervently: 
“  God  bless  ’em,  the  little  lambs !  ” 

They  went  up  the  great  staircase,  one  step  at  a  time; 


THE  JUNGLE 


287 


at  the  top  of  it  there  gleamed  at  them  out  of  the  shadows 
the  figure  of  a  nymph  crouching  by  a  fountain,  a  figure 
ravishingly  beautiful,  the  flesh  warm  and  glowing  with  the 
hues  of  life.  Above  was  a  huge  court,  with  domed  roof, 
the  various  apartments  opening  into  it.  The  butler  had 
paused  below  but  a  few  minutes  to  give  orders,  and  then 
followed  them ;  now  he  pressed  a  button,  and  the  hall 
blazed  with  light.  He  opened  a  door  before  them,  and 
then  pressed  another  button,  as  they  staggered  into  the 
apartment. 

It  was  fitted  up  as  a  study.  In  the  centre  was  a  mahog¬ 
any  table,  covered  with  books,  and  smokers’  implements ; 
the  walls  were  decorated  with  college  trophies  and  colors, — 
flags,  posters,  photographs  and  knickknacks  —  tennis-rack¬ 
ets,  canoe-paddles,  golf-clubs,  and  polo-sticks.  An  enor¬ 
mous  moose  head,  with  horns  six  feet  across,  faced  a 
Duft'alo  head  on  the  opposite  wall,  while  bear  and  tiger 
skins  covered  the  polished  floor.  There  were  lounging- 
cliairs  and  sofas,  window-seats  covered  with  soft  cushions 
of  fantastic  designs;  there  was  one  corner  fitted  in  Persian 
fashion,  with  a  huge  canopy  and  a  jewelled  lamp  beneath. 
Be3mnd,  a  door  opened  upon  a  bedroom,  and  be3'ond  that 
was  a  swimming  pool  of  the  purest  marble,  that  had  cost 
about  fort3"  thousand  dollars. 

Master  Freddie  stood  for  a  moment  or  two,  gazing  about 
him  ;  then  out  of  the  next  room  a  dog  emerged,  a  mon¬ 
strous  bulldog,  the  most  hideous  object  that  Jurgis  had 
ever  laid  e3'es  upon.  He  3'awned,  opening  a  mouth  like 
a  dragon’s  ;  and  he  came  toward  the  3mung  man,  wagging 
his  tail.  “  Hello,  Dewey  I  ”  cried  his  master.  “  Been 
havin’  a  snooze,  ole  boy  ?  W ell,  well  —  hello  there,  whuzza- 
matter?”  (The  dog  was  snai'ling  at  Jurgis.)  “Why, 
Dewey  —  this’  my  fren’,  Mr.  ilednose  —  ole  fren’  the 
guv’ner’s  1  Mr.  Rednose,  Admiral  Dewey  ;  shake  ban's  — 
liic.  Ain’t  he  a  daisy,  tliough  —  blue  ribbon  at  the  New 
York  show  —  eighty-five  huj  dred  at  a  clip  1  How’s  that, 
hey  ?  ” 

The  speaker  sank  into  one  of  the  big  arm-chairs,  and 
Admiral  Dewey  crouched  beneath  it ,  he  did  not  snarl 


288 


THE  JUNGLE 


again,  but  he  never  took  his  eyes  off  Jurgis*  He  was 
perfectly  sober,  was  the  Admiral. 

The  butler  had  closed  the  door,  and  he  stood  by  it, 
watching  Jurgis  every  second.  Now  there  came  footsteps 
outside,  and,  as  he  opened  the  door  a  man  in  livery  entered, 
carrying  a  folding-table,  and  behind  him  two  men  with 
covered  trays.  They  stood  like  statues  while  the  first 
spread  the  table  and  set  out  the  contents  of  the  trays  upon 
it.  There  were  cold  pates,  and  thin  slices  of  meat,  tiny 
bread  and  butter  sandwiches  with  the  crust  cut  off,  a  bowl 
of  sliced  peaches  and  cream  (in  January),  little  fancy  cakes, 
pink  and  green  and  yellow  and  white,  and  half  a  dozen 
ice-cold  bottles  of  wine. 

“  Thass  the  stuff  for  you  I  ”  cried  Master  Freddie,  ex¬ 
ultantly,  as  he  spied  them.  “Come  ’long,  ole  chappie, 
move  up.” 

And  he  seated  himself  at  the  table ;  the  waiter  pulled  a 
cork,  and  he  took  the  bottle  and  poured  three  glasses  of 
its  contents  in  succession  down  his  throat.  Then  he  gave 
a  long-drawn  sigh,  and  cried  again  to  Jurgis  to  seat  him¬ 
self. 

The  butler  held  the  chair  at  the  opposite  side  of  the 
table,  and  Jurgis  thought  it  was  to  keep  him  out  of  it ; 
but  finally  he  understood  that  it  was  the  other’s  intention 
to  put  it  under  him,  and  so  he  sat  down,  cautiously  and 
mistrustingly.  Master  Freddie  perceived  that  the  attend¬ 
ants  embarrassed  him,  and  he  remarked,  with  a  nod  to 
them,  “  You  may  go.” 

They  went,  all  save  the  butler. 

“You  may  go  too,  Hamilton,”  he  said, 

“  Master  Frederick  —  ”  the  man  began. 

“  Go  !  ”  cried  the  youngster,  angrily.  “  Damn  you, 
don’t  you  hear  me  ?  ” 

The  man  went  out  and  closed  the  door  ;  Jurgis,  who 
was  as  sharp  as  he,  observed  that  he  took  the  key  out  of 
the  lock,  in  order  that  he  r  ight  peer  through  the  key¬ 
hole. 

Master  Frederick  turned  to  the  table  again.  “Now.” 
he  said,  “go  for  it.” 


THE  JUNGLE 


289 


Jurgis  gazed  at  him  doubtingly.  “  Eat  I  ”  cried  the 
other.  “  Pile  in,  ole  chappie  !  ” 

“  Don’t  you  want  anything  ?  ”  Jurgis  asked. 

“  Ain’t  hungry,”  was  the  reply  —  “■  only  thirsty.  Kitty 
and  me  had  some  candy  —  you  go  on.” 

So  Jurgis  began,  without  further  parley.  He  ate  as 
with  two  shovels,  his  fork  in  one  hand  and  his  knife  in  the 
other  ;  when  he  once  got  started  his  wolf-hunger  got  the 
better  of  him,  and  he  did  not  stop  for  breath  until  he  had 
cleared  every  plate.  “  Gee  whiz  1  ”  said  the  other,  who 
had  been  watching  him  in  wonder. 

Then  he  held  J urgis  tlie  bottle.  “  Lessee  you  drink 
now,”  he  said  ;  and  Jurgis  took  the  bottle  and  turned  it 
up  to  his  mouth,  and  a  wonderful  unearthly  liquid  ecstasy 
poured  down  his  throat,  tickling  every  nerve  of  him, 
thrilling  him  with  joy.  He  drank  the  very  last  drop  of 
it,  and  then  he  gave  vent  to  a  long-drawn  “Ah  !  ” 

“  Good  stulf,  hey  ?  ”  said  Freddie,  sympathetically;  he 
had  leaned  back  in  the  big  chair,  putting  his  arm  behind 
his  head  and  gazing  at  Jurgis. 

And  Jurgis  gazed  back  at  him.  He  was  clad  in  spotless 
evening-dress,  was  Freddie,  and  looked  very  handsome  — 
he  was  a  beautiful  boy,  with  light  golden  hair  and  the 
head  of  an  Antinous.  He  smiled  at  Jurgis  confidingly, 
and  then  started  talking  again,  with  his  blissful  insouciance. 
This  time  he  talked  for  ten  minutes  at  a  stretch,  and  in  the 
course  of  the  speech  he  told  Jurgis  all  of  his  family  history. 
His  big  brother  Charlie  was  in  loA'^e  with  the  guileless 
maiden  -who  played  the  part  of  “  Little  Bright-Eyes  ”  in 
“The  Kaliph  of  Kamskatka.”  Lie  had  been  on  the  verge 
of  marrying  her  once,  only  “  the  guv’ner  ”  had  sworn  to 
disinherit  him,  and  had  presented  him  with  a  sum  that 
would  stagger  the  imagination,  and  that  had  staggered 
the  virtue  of  “Little  Bright-Eyes.”  Now  Charlie  had 
got  leave  from  college,  and  had  gone  away  in  his  auto¬ 
mobile  on  the  next  best  thing  to  a  honeymoon.  “The 
guv’ner”  had  made  threats  to  disinherit  another  of  his 
children  also,  sister  Gwendolen,  who  had  married  an 
Italian  marquis  with  a  string  of  titles  and  a  duelling 


290 


THE  JUXGLE 


record.  They  lived  in  his  chateau,  or  rather  had,  until  he 
had  taken  to  firing  the  breakfast-dishes  at  her  ;  then  she 
had  cabled  for  help,  and  the  old  gentleman  had  gone  over 
to  find  out  what  were  his  Grace’s  terms.  So  they  had  left 
Freddie  all  alone,  and  he  with  less  than  two  thousand 
dollars  in  his  pocket.  Freddie  was  up  in  arms  and  meant 
serious  business,  as  they  would  find  in  the  end  —  if  there 
was  no  other  way  of  bringing  them  to  terms  he  would 
have  his  “  Kittens  ”  wire  that  she  was  about  to  marry  him, 
and  see  what  happened  then. 

So  the  cheerful  youngster  rattled  on,  until  he  was  tired 
out.  He  smiled  his  sweetest  smile  at  Jurgis,  and  then  he 
closed  his  eyes,  sleepily.  Then  he  opened  them  again,  and 
smiled  once  more,  and  finally  closed  them  and  forgot  to 
open  them. 

For  several  minutes  Jurgis  sat  perfectly  motionless, 
watching  him,  and  revelling  in  the  strange  sensations  of 
the  champagne.  Once  he  stirred,  and  the  dog  growled  ; 
after  that  he  sat  almost  holding  his  breath  —  until  after  a 
while  the  door  of  the  room  opened  softly,  and  the  butler 
came  in. 

He  walked  toward  Jurgis  upon  tiptoe,  scowling  at  him; 
and  Jurgis  rose  up,  and  retreated,  scowling  back.  So 
until  he  was  against  the  wall,  and  then  the  butler  came 
close,  and  pointed  toward  the  door.  “  Get  out  of  here  I  ” 
he  whispered. 

Jurgis  hesitated,  giving  a  glance  at  Freddie,  who  was 

snoring  softly.  “If  you  do,  you  son  of  a - ”  hissed 

the  butler,  “  I’ll  mash  in  your  face  for  you  before  you  get 
out  of  here  I  ” 

And  Jurgis  wavered  but  an  instant  more.  He  saw 
“  Admiral  Dewey  ”  coming  up  behind  the  man  and  growl¬ 
ing  softly,  to  back  up  his  threats.  Then,  he  surrendered 
and  started  toward  the  door. 

They  went  out  without  a  sound,  and  down  the  great 
echoing  staircase,  and  through  the  dark  hall.  At  the 
front  door  he  paused,  and  the  butler  strode  close  to 
him. 


THE  JUNGLF 


891 


*HoId  up  your  hands,*’  he  snarled.  Jurgis  took  a  step 
back,  clinching  his  one  well  fist. 

“  What  for  ?  ”  he  cried  ;  and  then  understanding  that 
the  fellow  proposed  to  search  him,  he  answered,  “  I’ll  see 
you  in  hell  first.,” 

“  Do  you  want  to  go  to  jail  ?  ”  demanded  the  butler, 
menacingly.  “  I’ll  have  the  police  —  ” 

“Have  ’em!”  roared  Jurgis,  with  fierce  pas,sion.  “But 
you  won't  put  your  hands  on  me  till  you  do  I  I  haven’t 
touched  anything  in  your  damned  house,  and  I’ll  not  have 
you  touch  me  1  ” 

So  the  butler,  who  was  terrified  lest  his  young  mastei 
should  waken,  stepped  suddenly  to  the  door,  and  opened 
it.  “Get  out  of  here  I  ”  he  said;  and  then  as  Jurgis  passed 
through  the  opening,  he  gave  him  a  ferocious  kick  that  sent 
him  down  the  great  stone  steps  at  a  run,  and  landed  him 
sprawling  in  the  snow  at  the  bottom.. 


CHAPTER  XXV 


J  UEGIS  got  up,  wild  with  rage ;  but  the  door  was  shut 
and  the  great  castle  was  dark  and  impregnable.  Then  the 
icy  teeth  of  the  blast  bit  into  him,  and  he  turned  and  went 
away  at  a  run. 

When  he  stopped  again  it  was  because  he  was  coming 
to  frequented  streets  and  did  not  v/ish  to  attract  attention. 
In  spite  of  that  last  humiliation,  his  heart  was  thumping 
fast  with  triumph.  He  had  come  out  ahead  on  that  deal  I 
He  put  his  hand  into  his  trousers’  pocket  every  now  and 
then,  to  make  sure  that  the  precious  hundred-dollar  bill  was 
still  there. 

Yet  he  was  in  a  plight  —  a  curious  and  even  dreadful 
plight,  when  he  came  to  realize  it.  He  had  not  a  single 
cent  but  that  one  bill  I  And  he  had  to  find  some  shelter 
that  night  —  he  had  to  change  it  I 

Jurgis  spent  half  an  hour  walking  and  debating  the 

Eroblem.  There  was  no  one  he  could  go  to  for  help  —  he 
ad  to  manage  it  all  alone.  To  get  it  changed  in  a  lodg¬ 
ing-house  would  be  to  take  his  life  in  his  hands — he  would 
almost  certainly  be  robbed,  and  perhaps  murdered,  before 
morning.  He  might  go  to  some  hotel  or  railroad-depot 
and  ask  to  have  it  changed ;  but  what  would  they  think, 
seeing  a  “bum”  like  him  with  a  hundred  dollars?  He 
would  probably  be  arrested  if  he  tried  it ;  and  what  story 
could  he  tell?  On  the  morrow  Freddie  Jones  would  dis¬ 
cover  his  loss,  and  there  Avould  be  a  hunt  for  him,  and  he 
would  lose  his  money.  The  only  other  plan  he  could  think 
of  was  to  try  in  a  saloon.  He  might  pay  them  to  change 
it,  if  it  could  not  be  done  otherwise 

292 


THE  JUNGLE 


He  began  peering  into  places  as  he  walked  ;  he  passed 
several  as  being  too  crowded — then  finally,  chancing  upon 
one  where  the  bartender  was  all  alone,  he  gripped  his  hands 
in  sudden  resolution  and  went  in. 

“  Can  you  change  me  a  hundred-dollar  bill  ?  ”  he 
demanded. 

The  bartender  was  a  big,  husky  fellow,  with  the  jaw  of 
a  prize  fighter,  and  a  three  weeks’  stubble  of  hair  upon  it. 
He  stared  at  Jurgis.  “What’s  that  youse  say?”  he 
demanded. 

“I  said,  could  you  change  me  a  hundred-dollar  bill?  ” 

“  Where’d  youse  get  it  ?  ”  he  inquired  incredulously. 

“Never  mind,”  said  Jurgis;  “I’ve  got  it,  and  I  want 
it  changed.  I’ll  pay  you  if  you’ll  do  it.” 

The  other  stared  at  him  hard.  “  Lemme  see  it,”  he 
said. 

“Will  you  change  it!  ”  Jurgis  demanded,  gripping  it 
tightly  in  his  pocket. 

“  How  the  hell  can  I  know  if  it’s  good  or  not?  ”  retorted 
the  bartender.  “  Whatcher  take  me  for,  hey  ?  ” 

Then  Jurgis  slowly  and  warily  approached  him;  he 
took  out  the  bill,  and  fumbled  it  for  a  moment,  while  the 
man  stared  at  him  with  hostile  eyes  across  the  counter. 
Then  finally  he  handed  it  over. 

The  other  took  it,  and  began  to  examine  it ;  he  smoothed 
it  between  his  fingers,  and  he  held  it  up  to  the  light ;  he 
turned  it  over,  and  upside  down,  and  edgeways.  It  was 
new  and  rather  stiff,  and  that  made  him  dubious.  Jurgis 
was  watching  him  like  a  cat  all  the  time. 

“  Humph,”  he  said,  finally,  and  gazed  at  the  stranger, 
sizing  him  up  —  a  ragged,  ill-smelling  tramp,  with  no  over¬ 
coat  and  one  arm  in  a  sling  —  and  a  hundred-dollar  bill  I 
Want  to  buy  anything?”  he  demanded. 

“Yes,”  said  Jurgis,  “I’ll  take  a  glass  of  beer.” 

“  All  right,”  said  the  other,  “  I’ll  change  it.”  And  he 
put  the  bill  in  his  pocket,  and  poured  Jurgis  out  a  glass  of 
beer,  and  set  it  on  the  counter.  Then  he  turned  to  the 
cash-register,  and  punched  up  five  cents,  and  began  to 
pull  money  out  of  the  drawer.  Finally,  he  faced  Jurgis, 


294 


THE  JUNGLE 


counting  it  out  —  two  dimes,  a  quarter,  and  fifty  cents. 
“There,”  he  said. 

For  a  second  Jurgis  waited,  expecting  to  see  him  turn 
again.  “  My  ninety-nine  dollars,”  he  said. 

“  What  ninety-nine  dollars?  ”  demanded  the  bartender. 

“  My  change  !  ”  he  cried  —  “  the  rest  of  my  hun¬ 
dred  1  ” 

“  Go  on,”  said  the  bartender,  “  youhe  nutty !  ” 

And  Jurgis  stared  at  him  with  wild  eyes.  For  an 
instant  horror  reigned  in  him  —  black,  paralyzing,  awful 
horror,  clutching  him  at  the  heart ;  and  then  came  rage, 
in  surging,  blinding  floods — he  screamed  aloud,  and  seized 
the  glass  and  hurled  it  at  the  other’s  head.  The  man 
ducked,  and  it  missed  him  by  half  an  inch ;  he  rose 
again  and  faced  Jurgis,  who  was  vaulting  over  the  bar 
with  his  one  well  arm,  and  dealt  him  a  smashing  blow  in 
the  face,  hurling  him  backward  upon  the  floor.  Then,  as 
Jurgis  scrambled  to  his  feet  again  and  started  round  the 
counter  after  him,  he  shouted  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  “Help  S 
help !  ” 

Jurgis  seized  a  bottle  off  the  counter  as  he  ran;  and  as 
the  bartender  made  a  leap  he  hurled  the  missile  at  him  with 
all  his  force.  It  just  grazed  his  head,  and  shivered  into  a 
thousand  pieces  against  the  post  of  the  door.  Then  Jurgis 
started  back,  rushing  at  the  man  again  in  the  middle  of  the 
room.  This  time,  in  his  blind  frenzy,  he  came  without  a 
bottle,  and  that  was  all  the  bartender  wanted  —  he  met 
him  halfway  and  floored  him  with  a  sledge-hammer  drive 
between  the  eyes.  An  instant  later  the  screen-doors  flew 
open,  and  two  men  rushed  in  —  just  as  Jurgis  was  getting 
to  his  feet  again,  foaming  at  the  mouth  with  rage,  and  try¬ 
ing  to  tear  his  broken  arm  out  of  its  bandages. 

“  Look  out !  ”  shouted  the  bartender.  “  He’s  got  a 
knife  !  ”  Then,  seeing  that  the  two  were  disposed  to  join 
in  the  fray,  he  made  another  rush  at  Jurgis,  and  knocked 
aside  his  feeble  defence  and  sent  him  tumbling  again ;  and 
the  three  flung  themselves  upon  him,  rolling  and  kicking 
about  the  place, 

A  second  later  a  policeman  dashed  in,  and  the  bartender 


THE  JUNGLE 


295 


yelled  once  moxe  —  “Look  out  for  his  knife!”  Jurgis 
had  fought  himself  half  to  his  knees,  when  the  policeman 
made  a  leap  at  him,  and  cracked  him  across  the  face  with 
his  club.  Tliough  the  blow  staggered  him,  the  wild  beast 
frenzy  still  blazed  in  him,  and  he  got  to  his  feet,  lunging 
into  the  air.  Then  again  the  club  descended,  full  upon 
his  head,  and  he  dropped  like  a  log  to  the  floor. 

The  policeman  crouched  over  him,  clutching  his  stick, 
waiting  for  him  to  try  to  rise  again ;  and  meantime  the 
barkeeper  got  up,  and  put  his  hand  to  his  head.  “  Christ !  ” 
he  said,  “  1  thought  I  was  done  for  that  time.  Did  he  cut 
me?  ” 

“  Don’t  see  anything,  Jake,”  said  the  policeman. 
“What’s  the  matter  with  him?” 

“  Just  crazy  drunk,”  said  the  other.  “  A  lame  duck,  toe 
—  but  he  ’most  got  me  under  the  bar.  Youse  had  better 
call  the  wagon,  Billy.” 

“  No,”  said  the  officer.  “  He’s  got  no  more  fight  in  him, 
I  guess  —  and  he’s  only  got  a  block  to  go.”  He  twisted 
his  hand  in  Jurgis’s  collar  and  jerked  at  him.  “  Git  up  here, 
you  I  ”  he  commanded. 

But  Jurgis  did  not  move,  and  the  bartender  went  behind 
the  bar,  and,  after  stowing  the  hundred-dollar  bill  away  in 
a  safe  hiding-place,  came  and  poured  a  glass  of  water  over 
Jurgis.  Then,  as  the  latter  began  to  moan  feebly,  the 
policeman  got  him  to  his  feet  and  di-agged  him  out  of  the 
place.  The  station-house  was  just  around  the  corner, 
and  so  in  a  few  minutes  Jurgis  was  in  a  cell. 

He  spent  half  the  night  lying  unconscious,  and  the 
balance  moaning  in  torment,  with  a  blinding  headache 
and  a  racking  thirst.  Now  and  then  he  cried  aloud  for 
a  drink  of  water,  but  there  was  no  one  to  hear  him.  There 
were  others  in  that  same  station-house  with  split  heads  and 
a  fever ;  there  were  hundreds  of  them  in  the  great  city, 
and  tens  of  thousands  of  them  in  the  great  land,  and  there 
was  no  one  to  hear  any  of  them. 

In  the  morning  Jurgis  was  given  a  cup  of  water  and  a 
piece  of  bread,  and  then  bustled  into  a  patrol  wagon  and 


296 


THE  jungle 


driven  to  the  nearest  police-court.  He  sat  in  the  pen  with 
a  score  of  others  until  his  turn  came. 

The  bartender — who  proved  to  be  a  well-known  bruiser 
—  was  called  to  the  stand.  He  took  the  oath  and  told  his 
story.  The  prisoner  had  come  into  his  saloon  after  mid¬ 
night,  fighting  drunk,  and  had  ordered  a  glass  of  beer  and 
tendered  a  dollar  bill  in  payment.  He  had  been  given 
ninety-five  cents’  change,  and  had  demanded  ninety-nine 
dollars  more,  and  before  the  plaintiff  could  even  answer 
had  hurled  the  glass  at  him  and  then  attacked  him  with 
a  bottle  of  bitters,  and  nearly  wrecked  the  place. 

Then  the  prisoner  was  sworn — a  forlorn  object,  haggard 
and  unshorn,  with  an  arm  done  up  in  a  filthy  bandage,  a 
cheek  and  head  cut  and  bloody,  and  one  eye  purplish  black 
and  entirely  closed.  “  What  have  you  to  say  for  your¬ 
self  ?  ”  queried  the  magistrate. 

“Your  Honor,”  said  Jurgis,  “I  went  into  his  place  and 
asked  the  man  if  he  could  change  me  a  hundred-dollar 
bill.  And  he  said  he  would  if  I  bought  a  drink.  I 
gave  him  the  bill  and  then  he  wouldn’t  give  me  the 
change.” 

The  magistrate  was  staring  at  him  in  perplexityc  “You 
gave  him  a  hundred-dollar  bill  I  ”  he  exclaimed. 

“Yes,  your  Honor,”  said  Jurgis. 

“  Where  did  you  get  it  ?  ” 

“  A  man  gave  it  to  me,  your  Honor.” 

“  A  man?  What  man,  and  what  for  ?  ” 

“A  young  man  I  met  upon  the  street,  your  Honor. 
I  had  been  begging.” 

There  was  a  titter  in  the  court-room ;  the  officer  who 
was  holding  Jurgis  put  up  his  hand  to  hide  a  smile,  and 
the  magistrate  smiled  withoiit  trying  to  hide  it.  “  It’s 
true,  your  Honor  1  ”  cried  Jurgis,  passionately. 

“  You  had  been  drinking  as  well  as  begging  last  nighti 
had  you  not  ?  ”  inquired  the  magistrate. 

“No,  your  Honor  —  ”  protested  Jurgis.  “I  —  ” 

“You  had  not  had  anything  to  drink?  ” 

“  Why,  yes,  your  Honor,  I  had  —  ” 

“  What  did  you  have  ?  ” 


THE  JUNGLE 


29? 


“  I  had  a  bottle  of  something  —  I  don’t  know  what  it 
was —something  that  burned  —  ” 

There  was  again  a  laugh  round  the  court-room,  stopping 
suddenly  as  the  magistrate  looked  up  and  frowned.  “  Have 
you  ever  been  arrested  before  ?  ”  he  asked  abruptly. 

The  question  took  Jurgis  aback,  “I  —  I  —  ”  he 
stammered. 

“  Tell  me  the  truth,  now  I  ”  commanded  the  other, 
sternly. 

“  Yes,  your  Honor,”  said  Jurgis, 

”  How  often  ?  ” 

“  Only  once,  your  Honor." 

«  What  for  ?  ” 

“  For  knocking  down  my  boss,  your  Honor.  1  was 
working  in  the  stockyards,  and  he  —  ” 

“  I  see,”  said  his  Honor ;  “  1  guess  that  will  do.  You 
ought  to  stop  drinking  if  you  can’t  control  yourself.  Ten 
days  and  costs.  Next  case.” 

Jurgis  gave  vent  to  a  cry  of  dismay,  cut  off  suddenly 
by  the  policeman,  who  seized  him  by  the  collar.  He  was 
jerked  out  of  the  way,  into  a  room  with  tho  convicted 
prisoners,  where  he  sat  and  wept  like  a  child  in  his  impo¬ 
tent  rage.  It  seemed  monstrous  to  him  that  policemen 
and  judges  should  esteem  his  word  as  nothing  in  compari¬ 
son  with  the  bartender’s  ;  poor  Jurgis  could  not  know 
that  the  owner  of  the  saloon  paid  five  dollars  each  week  to 
the  policeman  alone  for  Sunday  privileges  and  general 
favors  —  nor  that  the  pugilist  bartender  was  one  of  the 
most  trusted  henchmen  of  the  Democratic  leader  of  the 
district,  and  had  helped  only  a  few  months  before  to  hustle 
out  a  record-breaking  vote  as  a  testimonial  to  the  magis¬ 
trate,  who  had  been  made  the  target  of  odious  kid-gloved 
reformers. 

Jurgis  was  driven  out  to  the  Bridewell  for  the  second  time- 
In  his  tumbling  around  he  had  hurt  his  arm  again,  and  so 
could  not  work,  but  had  to  be  attended  by  the  physician. 
Also  his  head  and  his  eye  had  to  be  tied  up  —  and  sc  he 
was  a  pretty-looking  object  v/hen,  the  second  day  after 


20 


298 


THE  JUNGLE 


his  arrival,  he  went  out  into  the  exercise-court  and  encoun¬ 
tered —  Jack  Duane  ! 

The  3^0  ung  fellow  was  so  glad  to  see  Jurgis  that  he  al¬ 
most  hugged  him.  ‘‘By  God,  if  it  isn’t  ‘the  Stinker’ I” 
he  cried.  “  And  what  is  it  —  have  you  been  through  a 
sausage-machine  ?  ” 

“No,”  said  Jurgis,  “but  I’ve  been  in  a  railroad  wreck 
and  a  fight,”  And  then,  v»^hile  some  of  the  other  prisoners 
gathered  round,  he  told  his  wild  story  ;  most  of  them 
were  incredulous,  but  Duane  knew  that  Jurgis  could  never 
have  made  up  such  a  yam  as  that. 

“Hard  luck,  old  man,”  he  said,  when  they  were  alone j 
“  but  maybe  it’s  taught  you  a  lesson.” 

“  I’ve  learned  some  things  since  I  saw  you  last,”  said 
Jurgis,  mournfully.  Then  he  explained  how  he  had  spent 
the  last  summer,  “hoboing  it,”  as  the  phrase  was.  “And 
you  ?  ”  he  asked,  finally.  “  Have  you  been  here  ever 
since  ?” 

“  Lord,  no  I  ”  said  the  other.  “  I  only  came  in  the  day 
before  yesterday.  It’s  the  second  time  they’ve  sent  me 
up  on  a  trumped-up  charge- — I’ve  had  hard  luck  and  can’t 
pay  them  what  they  want.  Why  don’t  you  quit  Chicago 
with  me,  Jurgis  ?  ” 

“  I’ve  no  place  to  go,”  said  Jurgis,  sadly. 

“  Neither  have  I,”  replied  the  other,  laughing  lightly. 
—  “  But  we’ll  wait  till  we  get  out  and  see.” 

In  the  Bridewell  Jurgis  met  few  who  had  been  there  the 
last  time,  but  he  met  scores  of  others,  old  and  young,  of 
exactly  the  same  sort.  It  was  like  breakers  upon  a  beach ; 
there  was  new  water,  but  the  wave  looked  just  the  same. 
He  strobed  about  and  talked  with  them,  and  the  biggest- 
of  them  told  tales  of  their  prowess,  while  those  who  were 
weaker,  or  younger  and  inexperien(;ed,  gathered  round  and 
listened  in  admiring  silence.  The  last  time  he  was  there, 
Jurgis  had  thought  of  little  but  his  family ;  but  now  he 
was  free  to  listen  to  these  men,  and  to  realize  that  he  was 
one  of  them, -—that  their  point  of  view  was  his  point  of 
view,  and  that  the  way  they  kept  themselves  ali\re  in  the 
world  was  the  way  he  meant  to  do  it  in  future. 


THE  JUNGLE 


299 


And  so,  when  he  was  turned  out  of  prison  again,  with¬ 
out  a  penny  in  his  pocket,  he  went  straight  to  Jack  Duane. 
He  went  full  of  humility  and  gratitude ;  for  Duane  was 
a  gentleman,  and  a  man  with  a  profession  —  and  it  was  re¬ 
markable  that  he  should  be  willing  to  throw  in  his  lot  with 
a  humble  working-man,  one  who  had  even  been  a  beggar 
and  a  tramp.  Jurgis  could  not  see  what  help  he  could  be 
to  him  ;  he  did  not  understand  that  a  man  like  himself  — - 
who  could  be  trusted  to  stand  by  any  one  who  was  kind  to 
him  —  was  as  rare  among  criminals  as  among  any  other 
class  of  men. 

The  address  Jurgis  had  was  a  garret-room  in  the  Ghetto 
district,  the  home  of  a  pretty  little  French  girl,  Duane’s 
mistress,  who  sewed  all  day,  and  eked  out  her  living  by 
prostitution.  He  had  gone  elsewhere,  she  told  Jurgis  — 
he  was  afraid  to  stay  there  now,  on  account  of  the  police. 
The  new  address  was  a  cellar  dive,  whose  proprietor  said 
that  he  had  never  heard  of  Duane ;  but  after  he  had  put 
Jurgis  through  a  catechism  he  showed  him  a  back  stairs 
which  led  to  a  “  fence  ”  in  the  rear  of  a  pawnbroker’s 
shop,  and  thence  to  a  number  of  assignation-rooms,  in  one 
of  which  Duane  was  hiding. 

Duane  was  glad  to  see  him  ;  he  was  without  a  cent  of 
Jnoney,  he  said,  and  had  been  waiting  for  Jurgis  to  help  him 
get  some.  He  explained  his  plan  —  in  fact  he  spent  the 
day  in  laying  bare  to  iiis  friend  the  criminal  world  of  the 
city,  and  in  showing  him  how  he  might  earn  himself  a  living 
in  it.  That  winter  he  would  have  a  hard  time,  on  account 
of  his  arm,  and  because  of  an  unwonted  fit  of  activity  of 
the  police ;  but  so  long  as  he  was  unknown  to  them  he 
would  be  safe  if  he  were  careful.  Here  at  “Papa”  Han¬ 
son’s  (so  they  called  the  old  man  who  kept  the  dive)  he 
might  rest  at  ease,  for  “  Papa  ”  Hanson  was  “  square  ”  — 
would  stand  by  him  so  long  as  he  paid,  and  gave  him  an 
hour’s  notice  if  there  were  to  be  a  police  raid.  Also 
Rosensteg,  the  pawnbroker,  would  buy  anything  he  had 
for  a  third  of  its  value,  and  guarantee  to  keep  it  hidden 
for  a  year. 

There  was  an  oil  stove  in  the  little  cupboard  of  a  room. 


800 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  they  had  some  supper  ;  and  then  about  eleven  o’clock 
at  night  they  sallied  forth  together,  by  a  rear  entrance  to 
the  place,  Duane  armed  with  a  slung-shot.  They  came 
to  a  residence  district,  and  he  sprang  up  a  lamp  post  and 
))lew  out  the  light,  and  then  the  two  dodged  into  the 
shelter  of  an  area-step  and  hid  in  silence. 

Pretty  soon  a  man  came  by,  a  working-man  —  and  they 
let  him  go.  Then  after  a  long  interval  came  the  heavy 
tread  of  a  policeman,  and  they  held  their  breath  till  he 
was  gone.  Though  half  frozen,  they  waited  a  full  quar¬ 
ter  of  an  hour  after  that  —  and  then  again  came  footsteps, 
walking  briskly.  Duane  nudged  Jurgis,  and  the  instant 
the  man  had  passed  they  rose  up.  Duane  stole  out  as 
silently  as  a  shadow,  and  a  second  later  Jurgis  heard  a 
thud  and  a  stifled  cry.  He  was  only  a  couple  of  feet  be¬ 
hind,  and  he  leaped  to  stop  the  man’s  mouth,  while  Duane 
held  him  fast  by  the  arms,  as  they  had  agreed.  But  the 
man  was  limp  and  showed  a  tendency  to  fall,  and  so  Jurgis 
had  only  to  hold  him  by  the  collar,  while  the  other,  with 
swift  fingers,  went  through  his  pockets, — ripping  open, 
first  his  overcoat,  and  then  his  coat,  and  then  his  vest, 
searching  inside  and  outside,  and  transferring  the  contents 
into  his  own  pockets.  At  last,  after  feeling  of  the  man’s 
fingers  and  in  his  neck-tie,  Duane  whispered,  “  That’s  all  I  ” 
and  they  dragged  him  to  the  area  and  dropped  him  in. 
Then  Jurgis  went  one  way  and  his  friend  the  other,  walk¬ 
ing  briskly. 

The  latter  arrived  first,  and  Jurgis  found  him  examin¬ 
ing  the  “  swag.”  There  was  a  gold  watch,  for  one  thing, 
with  a  chain  and  locket  ;  there  was  a  silver  pencil,  and  a 
match-box,  and  a  handful  of  small  change,  and  finally  a 
card-case.  This  last  Duane  opened  feverishly  —  there  were 
letters  and  checks,  and  two  theatre-tickets,  and  at  last,  in 
the  back  part,  a  wad  of  bills.  He  counted  them  —  there 
was  a  twenty,  five  tens,  four  fives,  and  three  ones.  Duane 
drew  a  long  breath.  “  That  lets  us  out  I  ”  he  said. 

After  further  examination,  they  burned  the  card-case 
and  its  contents,  all  but  the  bills,  and  likewise  the  picture 
of  a  little  girl  in  the  locket.  Then  Duane  took  the  watch 


THE  JUNGLE 


301 


and  trinkets  downstairs,  and  came  back  with  sixteen 
dollars.  “  The  old  scoundrel  said  the  case  was  filled,”  he 
said.  “  It’s  a  lie,  but  he  knows  I  want  the  money.” 

They  divided  up  the  spoils,  and  Juigis  got  as  his  share 
fifty-five  dollars  and  some  change.  He  protested  that  it 
was  too  much,  but  the  other  had  agreed  to  divide  even. 
That  was  a  good  haul,  he  said,  better  than  the  average. 

When  they  got  up  in  the  morning,  Jurgis  was  sent 
out  to  buy  a  paper  ;  one  of  the  pleasures  of  committing 
a  crime  was  the  reading  about  it  afterward.  “  I  had  a 
pal  that  always  did  it,”  Duane  remarked,  laughing  — 
“until  one  day  he  read  that  he  had  left  three  thousand 
dollars  in  a  lower  inside  pocket  of  his  party’s  vest  1  ” 

There  was  a  half-column  account  of  the  robbery  —  it 
was  evident  that  a  gang  was  operating  in  the  neighbor¬ 
hood,  said  the  paper,  for  it  was  the  third  within  a  week, 
and  the  police  were  apparently  powerless.  The  victim 
was  an  insurance  agent,  and  he  had  lost  a  hundred  and 
ten  dollars  that  did  not  belong  to  him.  He  had  chanced 
to  have  his  name  marked  on  his  shirt,  otherwise  he  would 
not  have  been  identified  yet.  His  assailant  had  hit  him 
too  hard,  and  he  was  suffering  from  concussion  of  the 
brain;  and  also  he  had  been  half-frozen  when  found,  and 
would  lose  three  fingers  of  his  right  hand.  Tlie  enter- 
prising  newspaper  reporter  had  taken  all  this  information 
to  his  family,  and  told  how  they  had  received  it. 

Since  it  was  Jurgis’s  first  experience,  these  details  natu¬ 
rally  caused  him  some  worriment ;  but  the  other  laughed 
coolly  —  it  was  the  way  of  the  game,  and  there  was  no 
helping  it.  Before  long  Jurgis  would  think  no  more  of 
it  than  they  did  in  the  yards  of  knocking  out  a  bullock. 
“It’s  a  case  of  us  or  the  other  fellow,  and  I  say  the  other 
fellow  every  time,”  he  observed. 

“  Still,”  said  J urgis,  reflectively,  “  he  never  did  us  any 
harm.” 

“He  was  doing  it  to  somebody  as  hard  as  he  could, 
you  can  be  sure  of  that,”  said  his  friend. 

Duane  had  already  explained  to  Jurgis  that  if  a  man  of 


302 


THE  JUNGLE 


their  trade  were  known  he  would  have  to  work  all  the 
time  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  the  police.  Therefore  it 
would  be  better  for  Jurgis  to  stay  in  hiding  and  never  be 
seen  in  public  with  his  pal.  But  Jurgis  soon  got  very 
tired  of  staying  in  hiding.  In  a  couple  of  weeks  he  was 
feeling  strong  and  beginning  to  use  his  arm,  and  then  he 
could  not  stand  it  any  longer.  Duane,  who  had  done  a 
job  of  some  sort  by  himself,  and  made  a  truce  with  the 
powers,  brought  over  Marie,  his  little  French  girl,  to  share 
with  him ;  but  even  that  did  not  avail  for  long,  and  in 
the  end  he  had  to  give  up  arguing,  and  take  Jurgis 
out  and  introduce  him  to  the  saloons  and  “  sporting- 
houses  ”  where  the  big  crooks  and  “hold-up  men”  hung 
out. 

And  so  Jurgis  got  a  glimpse  of  the  high-class  criminal 
world  of  Chicago.  The  city,  which  was  owned  by  an 
oligarchy  of  business  men,  being  nominally  ruled  by  the 
people,  a  huge  army  of  graft  was  necessary  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  effecting  the  transfer  of  power.  Twice  a  year,  in 
the  spring  and  fall  elections,  millions  of  dollars  were  fur¬ 
nished  by  the  business  men  and  expended  by  this  army; 
meetings  were  held  and  clever  speakers  were  hired,  bands 
played  and  rockets  sizzled,  tons  of  documents  and  reser¬ 
voirs  of  drinks  were  distributed,  and  tens  of  thousands  of 
votes  were  bought  for  cash.  And  this  army  of  graft  had, 
of  course,  to  be  maintained  the  year  round.  The  leaders 
and  organizers  were  maintained  by  the  business  men 
directly, —  aldermen  and  legislators  by  means  of  bribes, 
party  officials  out  of  the  campaign  funds,  lobbyists  and 
corporation  lawyers  in  the  form  of  salaries,  contractors  by 
means  of  jobs,  labor  union  leaders  by  subsidies,  and  news¬ 
paper  proprietors  and  editors  by  advertisements.  The 
rank  and  file,  however,  were  either  foisted  upon  the  city, 
or  else  lived  off  the  populace  directly.  There  was  the 
police  department,  and  the  fire  and  water  departments, 
and  the  whole  balance  of  the  civil  list,  from  the  meanest 
office-boy  to  the  head  of  a  city  department ;  and  for  the 
horde  who  could  find  no  room  in  these,  there  was  the 
world  of  vice  and  crime,  there  was  license  to  seduce,  to 


THE  JUNGLE 


303 


swindle  and  plunder  and  prey.  The  law  forbade  Sunday 
drinking  ;  and  this  had  delivered  the  saloon-keepers  into 
the  hands  of  the  police,  and  made  an  alliance  between  them 
necessary.  The  law  forbade  prostitution;  and  this  had 
brought  the  “madames”  into  the  combination.  It  was  the 
same  with  the  gambling-house  keeper  and  the  pool -room 
man,  and  the  same  with  any  other  man  or  woman  who  had 
a  means  of  getting  “graft,”  and  was  willing  to  pay  over  a 
share  of  it ;  the  green-goods  man  and  the  highwayman,  the 
pickpocket  and  the  sneak-thief,  and  the  receiver  of  stolen 
goods,  the  seller  of  adulterated  milk,  of  stale  fruit  and 
diseased  meat,  the  proprietor  of  unsanitary  tenements,  the 
fake-doctor  and  the  usurer,  the  beggar  and  the  “  push-cart 
man,”  the  prize-fighter  and  the  professional  slugger,  the 
"ace-track  “  tout,”  the  procurer,  the  white-slave  agent,  and 
the  expert  seducer  of  young  girls.  All  of  these  agencies 
of  corruption  were  banded  together,  and  leagued  in  blood 
brotherhood  Vvdth  the  politician  and  the  police;  more  often 
than  not  they  were  one  and  the  same  person,  —  the  police 
captain  v/ould  own  the  brothel  he  pretended  to  raid,  and 
the  politician  would  open  his  headquarters  in  his  saloon. 
“Hinkydink”  or  “Bath-house  John,”  or  others  of  that 
ilk,  were  proprietors  of  the  most  notorious  dives  in  Chi¬ 
cago,  and  also  the  “gray  wolves”  of  the  city -council,  who 
gave  away  the  streets  of  the  city  to  the  business  men ;  and 
those  who  patronized  their  places  were  the  gamblers  and 
prize-fighters  who  set  the  law  at  defiance,  and  the  burglars 
and  hold-up  men  who  kept  the  whole  city  in  terror.  On 
election  day  all  these  powers  of  vice  and  crime  were  one 
power ;  they  could  tell  within  one  per  cent  what  the  vote 
of  their  district  would  be,  and  they  could  change  it  at  an 
hour’s  notice. 

A  month  ago  Jurgis  had  all  but  perished  of  starvation 
upon  the  streets  ;  and  now  suddenly,  as  by  the  gift  of 
a  magic  kejq  he  had  entered  into  a  world  where  money 
and  all  the  good  things  of  life  came  freely.  He  was 
introduced  by  his  friend  to  an  Irishman  named  “  Buck  ” 
Halloran,  who  was  a  political  “  worker  ”  and  on  the  inside 
of  things.  This  man  talked  with  Jurgis  for  a  while,  and 


S04 


THE  JUNGLE 


then  told  him  that  he  had  a  little  plan  by  which  a  man 
who  looked  like  a  working-man  might  make  some  easy 
money  ;  but  it  was  a  private  aifair,  and  had  to  be  kept 
quiet.  Jurgis  expressed  himself  as  agreeable,  and  the 
other  took  him  that  afternoon  (it  was  Saturday)  to  a 
place  where  city  laborers  were  being  paid  off.  The  pay¬ 
master  sat  in  a  little  booth,  with  a  pile  of  envelopes  before 
him,  and  two  policemen  standing  by.  Jurgis  went,  ac¬ 
cording  to  directions,  and  gave  the  name  of  “  Michael 
O'Flaherty,”  and  received  an  envelope,  which  he  took 
around  the  corner  and  delivered  to  Halloran,  who  was 
waiting  for  him  in  a  saloon.  Then  he  went  again,  and 
gave  the  name  of  ‘‘Johann  Schmidt,”and  a  third  time,  and 
gave  the  name  of  “Serge  Keminitsky,”  Halloran  had 
quite  a  list  of  imaginary  working-men,  and  Jurgis  got 
an  envelope  ^or  each  one.  For  this  work  he  received  five 
dollars,  and  was  told  that  he  might  have  it  every  week, 
so  long  as  he  kept  quiet.  As  Jurgis  was  excellent  at 
keeping  quiet,  he  soon  won  the  trust  of  “  Buck  ”  Halloran, 
and  was  introduced  to  others  as  a  man  who  could  be 
depended  upon. 

This  acquaintance  was  useful  to  him  in  another  way, 
also  ;  before  long  Jurgis  made  his  discovery  of  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  “  pull,”  and  just  why  his  boss,  Connor,  and  also  the 
pugilist  bartender,  had  been  able  to  send  him  to  jail. 
One  night  there  was  given  a  ball,  the  “  benefit  ”  of  “  One- 
eyed  Larry,”  a  lame  man  who  played  the  violin  in  one  of 
the  big  “high-class”  houses  of  prostitution  on  Clark  Street, 
and  was  a  wag  and  a  popular  character  on  the  “Levee.” 
This  ball  was  held  in  a  big  dance-hall,  and  was  one  of  the 
occasions  when  the  city’s  powers  of  debaiichery  gave 
themselves  up  to  madness.  Jurgis  attended  and  got  half 
insane  with  drink,  and  began  quarrelling  over  a  girl ;  his 
arm  was  pretty  strong  by  then,  and  he  set  to  work  to  clean 
out  the  place,  and  ended  in  a  cell  in  the  police-station. 
The  police-station  being  crowded  to  the  doors,  and  stink¬ 
ing  with  “bums,”  Jurgis  did  not  relish  staying  there  to 
sleep  off  his  liquor,  and  sent  for  Halloran,  who  called  up 
the  district  leader  and  had  Jurgis  bailed  out  by  telephone 


THE  JIGGLE 


305 


at  four  ©  clock  in  the  morniiig.  When  he  was  arraigned 
that  same  morning,  the  district  leader  had  already  seen  the 
clerk  of  the  court  and  explained  that  Jurgis  Kudkus  was 
a  decent  fellow,  who  had  been  indiscreet ;  and  so  J  urgis 
was  lined  ten  dollars  and  the  line  was  “  suspended  "  — 
which  meant  that  he  did  not  have  to  pay  it,  and  never 
would  have  to  pay  it,  unless  somebody  chose  to  bring  it  up 
against  him  in  the  future. 

Among  the  people  Jurgis  lived  with  now  money  was 
valued  according  to  an  entirely  different  standard  from 
that  of  the  people  of  Packmgtown  ;  yet,  strange  as  it  may 
seem,  he  did  a  great  deal  less  drinking  than  he  had  as  a 
working-man.  He  had  not  the  same  provocations  of 
exhaustion  and  hopelessness  ;  he  had  now'  something  to 
work  for,  to  struggle  for.  He  soon  found  that  it  he  kept 
his  wits  about  him,  he  would  come  upt  n  new  opportunities ; 
and  being  naturally  an  active  man,  he  not  only  kept  sober 
himself,  but  helped  to  steady  his  friend,  who  was  a  good 
deal  fonder  of  both  wine  and  women  than  he. 

One  thing  led  to  another.  In  the  saloon  where  Jurgis 
met  “  Buck  ”  Halloran  he  was  sitting  late  one  night  with 
Duane,  when  a  “  country  customer”  (a  buyer  for  an  out-of- 
town  merchant)  came  in,  a  little  more  than  half  “piped.” 
There  was  no  one  else  in  the  place  but  the  bartender, 
and  as  the  man  went  out  again  Jurgis  and  Duane  followed 
him  ;  he  went  round  the  corner,  and  in  a  dark  place  made 
by  a  combination  of  the  elevated  railroad  and  an  unrented 
building,  Jurgis  leaped  forward  and  shoved  a  revolver 
under  his  nose,  while  Duane,  with  his  hat  pulled  over  his 
eyes,  went  through  the  rnan'spockets  with  lightning  fingers. 
They  got  his  watch  and  his  “  wad,”  and  were  round  the 
corner  again  and  into  the  saloon  before  he  could  shout  more 
than  once.  The  bartender,  to  whom  they  had  tipped  the 
wink,  had  the  cellar-door  open  for  them,  and  they  vanished, 
making  their  way  by  a  secret  entrance  to  a  brothel  next 
door.  From  the  roof  of  this  there  was  access  to  three 
similar  places  oeyond.  By  means  of  these  passages  the 
customers  of  any  one  place  could  be  gotten  out  of  the  way, 
in  case  a  falling  out  with  the  pob’ce  chanced  to  lead  to  a 


306 


mE  JUNGLE 


raid  5  and  also  it  was  necessary  to  have  a  way  of  getting 
a  girl  out  of  reach  in  case  of  an  emergency.  Thousands 
of  them  came  to  Chicago  answering  advertisements  for 
“servants*’  and  “factory  hands,”  and  found  themselves 
trapped  by  fake  employment  agencies,  and  locked  np  in  a 
bawdy-house.  It  was  generally  enough  to  take  all  their 
clothes  away  from  them  ;  but  sometimes  they  would  have 
to  be  “  doped  ”  and  kept  prisoners  for  weeks  ;  and  mean¬ 
time  their  parents  might  be  telegraphing  the  police,  and 
even  coming  on  to  see  why  nothing  was  done.  Occasion¬ 
ally  there  was  no  way  of  satisfying  them  but  to  let  them- 
search  the  place  to  which  the  girl  had  been  traced. 

For  his  help  in  this  little  job,  the  bartender  received 
twenty  out  of  the  hundred  and  thirty  odd  dollars  that  the 
pair  secured  ;  and  naturally  this  put  them  on  friendly 
terms  with  him,  and  a  few  days  later  he  introduced  them 
to  a  little  “  sheeny  ”  named  Goldberger,  one  of  the  “  run¬ 
ners”  of  the  “sporting-house”  where  they  had  been 
hidden.  After  a  few  drinks  Goldberger  began,  with  some 
hesitation,  to  narrate  how  he  had  had  a  quarrel  over  his 
best  girl  with  a  professional  “  card-sharp,”  who  had  hit 
him  in  the  jaw.  The  fellow  was  a  stranger  in  Chicago, 
and  if  he  was  found  some  night  with  his  head  cracked 
there  would  be  no  one  to  care  very  much.  Jurgis,  who 
by  this  time  would  cheerfully  have  cracked  the  heads  of 
all  the  gamblers  in  Chicago,  inquired  what  would  be  com¬ 
ing  to  him  ;  at  which  the  Jew  became  still  more  confi¬ 
dential,  and  said  that  he  had  some  tips  on  the  New  Orleans 
races,  which  he  got  direct  from  the  police  captain  of  the 
district,  whom  he  had  got  out  of  a  bad  scrape,  and  who 
“  stood  in  ”  with  a  big  syndicate  of  horse  owners.  Duane 
took  all  this  in  at  once,  but  Jurgis  had  to  have  the  whole 
race-track  situation  explained  to  him  before  he  realized  the 
importance  of  such  an  opportunity. 

There  was  the  gigantic  Racing  Trust.  It  owned  tne 
legislatures  in  every  state  in  which  it  did  business  ;  it 
even  owned  some  of  the  big  newspapers,  and  made  public 
opinion  —  there  was  no  power  in  the  land  that  could 
oppose  it  unless,  perhaps,  it  were  the  Pool-room  Trust 


THE  JUNGLE 


307 


It  built  magnificent  racing  parks  all  over  the  country,  and 
by  means  of  enormous  purses  it  lured  the  people  to  come, 
and  then  it  organized  a  gigantic  shell-game,  whereby  it 
plundered  them  of  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  every 
year.  Horse-racing  had  once  been  a  sport,  but  nowadays 
it  was  a  business ;  a  horse  could  be  “  doped  ”  and  doctored, 
undertrained  or  overtrained  ;  it  could  be  made  to  fall  at 
any  moment  —  or  its  gait  could  be  broken  by  lashing  it 
with  the  whip,  which  all  the  spectators  would  take  to  be 
a  desperate  elfort  to  keep  it  in  the  lead.  There  were 
scores  of  such  tricks  ;  and  sometimes  it  was  the  owners 
who  played  them  and  made  fortunes,  sometimes  it  was  the 
jockeys  and  trainers,  sometimes  it  was  outsiders,  who 
bribed  them  —  but  most  of  the  time  it  was  the  chiefs  of 
the  trust.  Now,  for  instance,  they  were  having  winter- 
racing  in  New  Orleans,  and  a  syndicate  was  laying  out 
each  day’s  programme  in  advance,  and  its  agents  in  all  the 
Northern  cities  were  “milking”  the  pool-rooms.  The 
word  came  by  long-distance  telephone  in  a  cipher  code, 
just  a  little  while  before  each  race  ;  and  any  man  who 
could  get  the  secret  had  as  good  as  a  fortune.  If  Jurgis  did 
not  believe  it,  he  could  try  it,  said  the  little  Jew  —  let 
them  meet  at  a  certain  house  on  the  morrow  and  make  a 
test.  Jurgis  was  willing,  and  so  was  Duane,  and  so  they 
went  to  one  of  the  high-class  pool-rooms  where  brokers 
and  merchants  gambled  (with  society  women  in  a  private 
room),  and  they  put  up  ten  dollars  each  upon  a  horse 
called  “  Black  Beldame,”  a  six  to  one  shot,  and  won.  For 
a  secret  like  that  they  would  have  done  a  good  many  slug- 
gings  —  but  the  next  day  Goldberger  informed  them  that 
the  offending  gambler  had  got  wind  of  what  was  coming 
to  him,  and  had  skipped  the  town. 

There  were  ups  and  downs  at  the  business  ;  but  tliere 
was  always  a  living,  inside  of  a  jail,  if  not  out  of  it.  Early 
in  April  the  city  elections  were  due,  and  that  meant  pros¬ 
perity  for  all  the  powers  of  graft.  Jurgis,  hanging  round 
in  dives  and  gambling-houses  and  brothels,  met  with  the 
heelers  of  both  parties,  and  from  -their  conversation  he 


308 


THE  JUNGLE 


came  to  understand  all  the  ins  and  outs  of  the  game,  and  to 
hear  of  a  number  of  ways  in  which  he  could  make  himself 
useful  about  election  time.  “  Buck  ”  Halloran  was  a 
“Democrat,”  and  so  Jurgis  became  a  Democrat  also  ;  but 
he  was  not  a  bitter  one — the  Republicans  were  good  fellows, 
too,  and  were  to  have  a  pile  of  money  in  this  next  campaign. 
At  the  last  election  the  Republicans  had  paid  four  dollars 
a  vote  to  the  Democrats’  three  ;  and  “  Buck  ”  Halloran  sat 
one  night  playing  cards  with  Jurgis  and  another  man,  who 
told  how  Halloran  had  been  charged  with  the  job  of  voting 
a  “  bunch  ”  of  thirty-seven  newly  landed  Italians,  and  how 
he,  the  narrator,  had  met  the  Republican  worker  who  was 
after  the  very  same  gang,  and  how  the  three  had  effected 
a  bargain,  whereby  the  Italians  were  to  vote  half  and 
half,  for  a  glass  of  beer  apiece,  while  the  balance  of  the 
fund  went  to  the  conspirators  I 

Not  long  after  this,  Jurgis,  wearying  of  the  risks  and 
vicissitudes  of  miscellaneous  crime,  was  moved  to  give  up 
the  career  for  that  of  a  politician.  Just  at  this  time  there 
was  a  tremendous  uproar  being  raised  concerning  the 
alliance  between  the  criminals  and  the  police.  For  the 
criminal  graft  was  one  in  which  the  business  men  had  no 
direct  part  — ■  it  was  what  is  called  a  “  side-line,”  carried 
by  the  police.  “  Wide-open  ”  gambling  and  debauchery 
made  the  city  pleasing  to  “  trade,”  but  burglaries  and  hold¬ 
ups  did  not.  One  night  it  chanced  that  while  Jack  Duane 
was  drilling  a  safe  in  a  clothing  store  he  was  caught  red- 
handed  by  the  night-watchman,  and  turned  over  to  a 
policeman,  who  chanced  to  know  him  well,  and  who  took 
the  responsibility  of  letting  him  make  his  escape.  Such  a 
howl  from  the  newspapers  followed  this  that  Duane  was 
slated  for  a  sacrifice,  and  barely  got  out  of  town  in  time. 

And  just  at  that  juncture  it  happened  that  Jurgis  was 
introduced  to  a  man  named  Harper  whom  he  recognized  as 
the  night-watchman  at  Brown’s,  who  had  been  instrumental 
in  making  him  an  American  citizen,  the  first  year  of  his 
arrival  at  the  yards.  The  other  was  interested  in  the 
coincidence,  but  did  not  remember  Jurgis  —  he  had  han¬ 
dled  too  many  “  green  ones  ”  in  his  time,  he  said.  He  sat  in 


THE  JUNGLE 


309 


a  dance-hall  with  Jurgis  and  Halloran  until  one  or  two  in 
the  morning,  exchanging  experiences.  He  had  a  long 
story  to  tell  of  his  quarrel  with  the  superintendent  of  his 
department,  and  how  he  was  now  a  plain  working-man, 
and  a  good  union  man  as  well.  It  was  not  until  some 
months  afterward  that  Jurgis  understood  that  the  quarrel 
with  the  superintendent  had  been  prearranged,  and  that 
Harper  was  in  reality  drawing  a  salary  of  twenty  dollars 
a  week  from  the  packers  for  an  inside  report  of  his  union’s 
secret  proceedings.  The  yards  were  seething  with  agita¬ 
tion  just  then,  said  the  man,  speaking  as  a  unionist.  The 
people  of  Packingtown  had  borne  about  all  that  they  would 
bear,  and  it  looked  as  if  a  strike  might  begin  any  week. 

After  this  talk  the  man  made  inquiries  concerning  Jurgis, 
and  a  couple  of  days  la.ter  he  came  to  him  with  an  interest¬ 
ing  proposition.  He  was  not  absolutely  certain,  he  said, 
but  he  thought  that  he  could  get  him  a  regular  salary  if 
he  would  come  to  Packingtown  and  do  as  he  was  told,  and 
keep  his  mouth  shut.  Harper —  “  Bush  ”  Harper,  he  was 
called  —  was  a  right-hand  man  of  Mike  Scully,  the  Demo¬ 
cratic  boss  of  the  stockyards ;  and  in  the  coming  election 
there  was  a  peculiar  situation.  There  had  come  to  Scully 
a  proposition  to  nominate  a  certain  rich  brewer  who  lived 
upon  a  swell  boulevard  that  skirted  the  district,  and  who 
coveted  the  big  badge  and  the  “  honorable  ”  of  an  aider- 
man.  The  brewer  was  a  Jew,  and  had  no  brains,  but  he 
was  harmless,  and  would  put  up  a  rare  campaign  fund. 
Scully  had  accepted  the  offer,  and  then  gone  to  the  Re¬ 
publicans  with  a  proposition.  He  was  not  sure  that  he 
could  manage  the  “  sheeny,”  and  he  did  not  mean  to  take 
any  chances  with  his  district;  let  the  Republicans  nomi¬ 
nate  a  certain  obscure  but  amiable  friend  of  Scully’s,  who 
was  now  setting  ten-pins  in  the  cellar  of  an  Ashland  Ave¬ 
nue  saloon,  and  he,  Scully,  would  elect  him  with  the 
“  sheeny’s  ”  money,  and  the  Republicans  might  have  the 
glory,  which  was  more  than  they  would  get  otherwise. 
In  return  for  this  the  Republicans  would  agree  to  put  up 
no  candidate  the  following  year,  when  Scully  himself 
came  up  for  reelection  as  the  other  alderman  from  the 


810 


THE  JUNGLE 


ward.  To  this  the  Republicans  had  assented  at  once ;  but 
the  hell  of  it  was  —  so  Harper  explained — that  the  Repub¬ 
licans  were  all  of  them  fools — a  man  had  to  be  a  fool  to 
be  a  Republican  in  the  stockyards,  where  Scully  was  king. 
And  they  didn’t  know  how  to  work,  and  of  course  it 
would  not  do  for  the  Democratic  workers,  the  noble  red¬ 
skins  of  the  W ar- Whoop  League,  to  support  the  Repub¬ 
lican  openly.  The  difficulty  would  not  have  been  so  great 
except  for  another  fact  —  there  had  been  a  curious  develop¬ 
ment  in  stockyards  politics  in  the  last  year  or  two,  a  new 
party  having  leaped  into  being.  They  were  the  Socialists; 
and  it  was  a  devil  of  a  mess,  said  “Bush”  Harper.  The 
one  image  which  the  word  “Socialist”  brought  to  Jurgis 
was  of  poor  little  Tamoszius  Kuszleika,  who  had  called  him¬ 
self  one,  and  wmuld  go  out  with  a  couple  of  other  men  and 
a  soap-box,  and  shout  himself  hoarse  on  a  street  corner  Sat¬ 
urday  nights.  Tamoszius  had  tried  to  explain  to  Jurgiswhat 
it  was  all  about,  but  Jurgis,  who  was  not  of  an  imagina¬ 
tive  turn,  had  never  quite  got  it  straight  ;  at  present  he 
was  content  with  his  companion’s  explanation  that  the  So¬ 
cialists  were  the  enemies  of  American  institutions  —  could 
not  be  bought,  and  would  not  combine  or  make  any  sort 
of  a  “  dicker.”  Mike  Scully  was  very  much  worried  over 
the  opportunity  which  his  last  deal  gave  to  them  —  the 
stockyards  Democrats  were  furious  at  the  idea  of  a  rich 
capitalist  for  their  candidate,  and  while  they  were  changing 
they  might  possibly  conclude  that  a  Socialist  iirebrand  was 
preferable  to  a  Republican  bum.  And  so  right  here  was  a 
chance  for  Jurgis  to  make  himself  a  place  in  the  world, 
explained  “  Bush  ”  Harper;  he  had  been  a  union  man,  and 
he  was  known  in  the  yards  as  a  working-man;  he  must 
have  hundreds  of  acquaintances,  and  as  he  had  never  talked 
politics  with  them  he  might  come  out  as  a  Republican  now 
without  exciting  the  least  suspicion.  There  were  barrels  of 
money  for  the  use  of  those  who  could  deliver  the  goods; 
and  Jurgis  might  count  upon  Mike  Scully,  who  had  never 
yet  gone  back  on  a  friend.  Just  what  could  he  do? 
Jurgis  asked,  in  some  perplexity,  and  the  other  explained 
in  detail.  To  begin  with,  he  would  have  to  go  to  the 


THE  JUNGLE 


311 


yards  and  work,  and  he  mightn’t  relish  that ;  but  he 
would  have  what  he  earned,  as  well  as  the  rest  that  came  to 
him.  He  would  get  active  in  the  union  again,  and  per¬ 
haps  try  to  get  an  office,  as  he,  Harper,  had  ;  he  would  tell 
all  his  friends  the  good  points  of  Doyle,  the  Republican 
nominee,  and  the  bad  ones  of  the  “  sheeny  ”  ;  and  then 
Scully  would  furnish  a  meeting-place,  and  he  would  start 
the  “Young  Men’s  Republican  Association,”  or  something 
of  that  sort,  and  have  the  rich  brewer’s  best  beer  by  the 
hogshead,  and  fireworks  and  speeches,  just  like  the  War- 
Whoop  League.  Surely  Jurgis  must  know  hundreds  of 
men  who  would  like  that  sort  of  fun  ;  and  there  would  be 
the  regular  Republican  leaders  and  workers  to  help  him 
out,  and  they  would  deliver  a  big  enough  majority  o» 
election  day. 

When  he  had  heard  all  this  explanation  to  the  end, 
Jurgis  demanded  :  “  But  how  can  I  get  a  job  in  Packing- 
town?  I’m  blacklisted.” 

At  which  “  Bush  ”  Harper  laughed.  “  I’ll  attend  to  that 
all  right,”  he  said. 

And  the  other  replied,  “  It’s  a  go,  then  ;  I’m  your 
man.” 

So  Jurgis  went  out  to  the  stockyards  again,  and  was 
introduced  to  the  political  lord  of  the  district,  the  boss  of 
Chicago’s  mayor.  It  was  Scully  who  owned  the  brick¬ 
yards  and  the  dump  and  the  ice  pond  —  though  Jurgis 
did  not  know  it.  It  was  Scully  who  was  to  blame  for  the 
unpaved  street  in  which  Jurgis’s  child  had  been  drowned;  it 
was  Scully  who  had  put  into  office  the  magistrate  who  had 
first  sent  Jurgis  to  jail ;  it  was  Scullj'"  who  was  principal 
stockholder  in  the  company  which  had  sold  him  the  ram¬ 
shackle,  tenement,  and  then  robbed  him  of  it.  But  Jurgis 
knew  none  of  these  things  —  any  more  than  he  knew  that 
Scully  was  but  a  tool  and  puppet  of  the  packers.  To  him 
Scully  was  a  mighty  power,  the  “  biggest  ”  man  he  bad 
ever  met. 

He  was  a  little,  dried-up  Irishman,  whose  hands  shook, 
He  had  a  brief  talk  with  his  visitor,  watching  him  with 
his  rat-like  eyes,  and  making  up  his  mind  about  him;  and 


m 


THE  JUEGLE 


then  he  gave  him  a  note  to  Mr.  Harmon,  one  the  head 
managers  of  Durham’s :  - — 

“The  bearer,  Jurgis  Rudkus,  is  a  particular  friend  of 
mine,  and  I  would  like  you  to  find  him  a  good  place,  for 
important  reasons.  He  was  once  indiscreet,  but  you  will 
perhaps  be  so  good  as  to  overlook  that.” 

Mr.  Harmon  looked  up  inquiringly  when  he  read  this. 
“  What  does  he  mean  by  ‘  indiscreet  ’  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“  I  was  blacklisted,  sir,”  said  J urgis. 

At  which  the  other  frowned.  “  Blacklisted  ?  ”  he  said. 
“  How  do  you  mean  ?  ” 

And  Jurgis  turned  red  with  embarrassment.  He  had 
forgotten  that  a  blacklist  did  not  exist.  “  I  —  that  is 
I  had  difficulty  in  getting  a  place,”  he  stammered. 

“  What  was  the  matter  ?  ” 

“  1  got  into  a  quarrel  with  a  foreman  —  not  my  own 
boss,  sir — and  struck  him.” 

“  I  see,”  said  the  other,  and  meditated  for  a  few  mo 
ments.  “  What  do  you  wish  to  do  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“Anything,  sir,”  said  Jurgis  —  “only  I  had  a  broken 
arm  this  winter,  and  so  1  have  to  be  careful.” 

“  How  would  it  suit  you  to  be  a  night-watchman  ?  ” 

“  That  wouldn’t  do,  sir.  I  have  to  be  among  the  men 
at  night.” 

“  I  see — -politics.  Well,  would  it  suit  you  to  trim  hogs?’ 

“Yes,  sir,”  said  Jurgis. 

And  Mr.  Harmon  called  a  time-keeper  and  said,  “Take 
this  man  to  Pat  Murphy  and  tell  him  to  find  room  for  him 
somehow.” 

And  so  Jurgis  marched  into  the  hog-killing  room,  a 
place  where,  in  the  days  gone  by,  he  had  come  begging 
W  a  job.  Now  he  walked  jauntily,  and  smiled  to  himself, 
seeing'  the  frown  that  came  to  the  boss’s  face  as  the  time¬ 
keeper  said,  “  Mr.  Harmon  says  to  put  this  man  on.”  It 
would  overcrowd  his  department  and  spoil  the  record  he 
was  trying  to  make-— but  he  said  nob  a  word  except 
“All  rigfit.” 

And  so  Jurgis  became  a  working-man  once  more  •  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


3i3 


straightway  he  sought  out  his  old  friends,  and  joined  the 
union,  and  began  to  “  root  ”  for  “  Scotty  ”  Doyle  Doyle 
had  done  him  a  good  turn  once,  he  explained,  and  was 
really  a  bully  chap  |  Doyle  was  a  working-man  himself, 
and  would  represent  the  working-men  —  why  did  they 
want  to  vote  for  a  millionnaire  “  sheeny,”  and  what  the 
hell  had  Mike  Scully  ever  done  for  them  that  they  should 
back  his  candidates  all  the  time  ?  And  meantime  Scully 
had  given  Jurgis  a  note  to  the  Republican  leader  of  the 
ward,  and  he  had  gone  there  and  met  the  crowd  he  was 
to  work  witho  Already  they  had  hired  a  big  hall,  with 
some  of  the  brewer’s  money,  and  every  night  Jurgis 
brought  in  a  dozen  new  members  of  the  “  Doyle  Republi¬ 
can  Association.”  Pretty  soon  they  had  a  grand  opening 
night ;  and  there  was  a  brass  band,  which  marched 
through  the  streets,  and  fireworks  and  bombs  and  red 
lights  in  front  of  the  hall ;  and  there  was  an  enormous 
crowd,  with  two  overflow  meetings  —  so  that  the  pale  and 
trembling  candidate  had  to  recite  three  times  over  the 
little  speech  which  one  of  Scully’s  henchmen  had  written, 
and  which  he  had  been  a  month  learning  by  heart.  Best 
of  all,  the  famous  and  eloquent  Senator  Spareshanks,  presi¬ 
dential  candidate,  rode  out  in  an  automobile  to  discuss 
the  sacred  privileges  of  American  citizenship,  and  protec¬ 
tion  and  prosperity  for  the  American  working-man.  His 
inspiriting  address  was  quoted  to  the  extent  of  half  a 
column  in  all  the  morning  newspapers,  which  also  said 
that  it  could  be  stated  upon  excellent  authority  that  the 
unexpected  popularity  developed  by  Doyle,  the  Republican 
candidate  for  alderman,  was  giving  great  anxiety  to  Mr. 
Scully,  the  chairman  of  the  Democratic  City  Committee. 

The  chairman  was  still  more  worried  when  the  monster 
torchlight  procession  came  off,  with  the  members  of  the 
Doyle  Republican  Association  all  in  red  capes  and  hats, 
and  free  beer  for  every  voter  in  the  ward  —  the  best  beer 
ever  given  away  in  a  political  campaign,  as  the  whole  elec¬ 
torate  testified.  During  tnis  parade,  and  at  innumerable 
cart-tail  meetings  as  well,  Jurgis  labored  tirelessly.  He 
did  not  make  any  speeches — there  were  lawyers  and 


21 


314 


THE  JUNGLE 


other  experts  for  that — but  he  helped  to  manage  things*, 
distributing  notices  and  posting  placards  and  bringing 
out  the  crowds  ;  and  when  the  show  was  on  he  attended 
to  the  fireworks  and  the  beer.  Thus  in  the  course  of  the 
campaign  he  handled  many  hundreds  of  dollars  of  the 
Hebrew  brewer’s  money,  administering  it  with  naive  and 
touching  fidelity.  Toward  the  end,  however,  he  learned 
that  he  was  regarded  with  hatred  by  the  rest  of  the 
“boys,”  because  he  compelled  them  either  to  make  a 
poorer  showing  than  he  or  to  do  without  their  share  of 
the  pie.  After  that  Jurgis  did  his  best  to  please  them, 
and  to  make  up  for  the  time  he  had  lost  before  he  dis¬ 
covered  the  extra  bung-holes  of  the  campaign-barrel. 

He  pleased  Mike  Scully,  also.  On  election  morning  he 
was  out  at  four  o’clock,  “  getting  out  the  vote  ”  ;  he  had 
a  two-horse  carriage  to  ride  in,  and  he  went  from  house  to 
house  for  his  friends,  and  escorted  them  in  triumph  to  the 
polls.  Re  voted  half  a  dozen  times  himself,  and  voted 
some  of  his  friends  as  often  ;  he  brought  bunch  after 
bunch  of  the  newest  foreigners  — ■  Lithuanians,  Poles,  Bo¬ 
hemians,  Slovaks  —  and  when  he  had  put  them  through 
the  mill  he  turned  them  over  to  another  man  to  take  to 
the  next  polling-place.  When  Jurgis  first  set  out,  the 
captain  of  the  precinct  gave  him  a  hundred  dollars,  and 
three  times  in  the  course  of  the  day  he  came  for  another 
hundred,  and  not  more  than  twenty-five  out  of  each  lot 
got  stuck  in  his  own  pocket.  The  balance  all  went  for 
actual  votes,  and  on  a  day  of  Democratic  landslides  they 
elected  “  Scotty  ”  Doyle,  the  ex-ten-pin  setter,  by  nearly 
a  thousand  plurality  —  and  beginning  at  five  o’clock  in 
the  afternoon,  and  ending  at  three  the  next  morning, 
Jurgis  treated  himself  to  a  most  unholy  and  horrible 
“jag.”  Nearly  every  one  else  in  Packingtown  did  the 
same,  however,  for  there  was  universal  exultation  over 
this  triumph  of  popular  government,  this  crushing  defeat 
of  an  arrogant  plutocrat  by  the  powek  of  the  cointnon 
people. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


After  the  elections  Jurgis  stayed  on  in  Packingtown 
and  kept  his  job.  The  agitation  to  break  up  the  police 
protection  of  criminals  was  continuing,  and  it  seemed  to 
him  best  to  “  lay  low”  for  the  present.  He  had  nearly  three 
hundred  dollars  in  the  bank,  and  might  have  considered 
himself  entitled  to  a  vacation  ;  but  he  had  an  easy  job, 
and  force  of  habit  kept  him  at  it.  Besides,  Mike  Scully, 
whom  he  consulted,  advised  him  that  something  might 
‘‘  tui’n  up  ”  before  long. 

Jurgis  got  himself  a  place  in  a  boarding-house  with 
some  congenial  friends.  He  had  already  inquired  of 
Aniele,  and  learned  that  Elzbieta  and  her  family  had  gone 
down-town,  and  so  he  gave  no  further  thought  to  them. 
He  went  with  a  new  set,  now,  young  unmarried  fellow's 
who  were  “  sporty.”  Jurgis  had  long  ago  cast  off  his 
fertilizer  clothing,  and  since  going  into  politics  he  had 
donned  a  linen  collar  and  a  greasy  red  necktie.  He  had 
some  reason  for  thinking  of  his  dress,  for  he  was  making 
about  eleven  dollars  a  week,  and  two-thirds  of  it  he  might 
spend  upon  his  pleasures  v/ithout  ever  touching  his 
savings. 

Sometimes  he  would  ride  down-town  with  a  party  of 
friends  to  the  cheap  theatres  and  the  music  halls  and 
other  haunts  with  which  they  were  familiar.  Many  of 
the  saloons  in  Packingtown  had  pool-tables,  and  soma 
of  them  bowling-alleys,  by  means  of  which  he  could  spend 
his  evenings  in  petty  gambling.  Also,  there  were  cards 
and  dice.  One  time  Jurgis  got  into  a  game  on  a  Saturday 
night  and  won  prodigiously,  and  because  he  was  a  man  of 
spirit  he  stayed  in  with  the  rest  and  the  game  concinued 
until  late  Sunday  afternoon,  and  b*y  that  time  he  was  “out” 

316 


316 


THE  JUNGLE 


over  twenty  dollars^  On  Saturday  nights,  also,  a  number 
of  balls  were  generally  given  in  Packingtown  ;  each  man 
would  bring  his  “  girl  with  him,  paying  half  a  dollar  for 
a  ticket,  and  several  dollars  additional  for  drinks  in  the 
course  of  the  festivities,  which  continued  until  three  or 
four  o’clock  in  the  morning,  unless  broken  up  by  fighting. 
During  all  this  time  the  same  man  and  woman  would 
dance  together,  half-stupefied  with  sensuality  and  drink. 

Before  long  Jurgis  discovered  what  Scully  had  meant 
by  something  “turning  up.”  In  May  the  agreement  be¬ 
tween  the  packers  and  the  unions  expired,  and  a  new  agree¬ 
ment  had  to  be  signed.  Negotiations  were  going  on,  and 
the  yards  were  full  of  talk  of  a  strike.  The  old  scale  had 
dealt  with  the  wages  of  the  skilled  men  only ;  and  of  the 
members  of  the  Meat  Workers’  Union  about  two-thirds 
were  unskilled  men.  In  Chicago  these  latter  were  receiv¬ 
ing,  for  the  most  part,  eighteen  and  a  half  cents  an  hout, 
and  the  unions  wished  to  make  this  the  general  wage  foi 
the  next  year.  It  was  not  nearly  so  large  a  wage  as  it 
seemed  —  in  the  course  of  the  negotiations  the  union 
officers  examined  time-checks  to  the  amount  of  ten  thou¬ 
sand  dollars,  and  they  found  that  the  highest  wages  paid 
had  been  fourteen  dollars  a  week,  the  lowest  two  dollars 
and  five  cents,  and  the  average  of  the  whole,  six  dollars 
and  sixty-five  cents.  And  six  dollars  and  sixty -five  cents 
was  hardly  too  much  for  a  man  to  keep  a  family  on.  Con¬ 
sidering  the  fact  that  the  price  of  dressed  meat  had  in¬ 
creased  nearly  fifty  per  cent  in  the  last  five  years,  while 
the  price  of  “  beef  on  the  hoof  ”  had  decreased  as  much,  it 
would  have  seemed  that  the  packers  ought  to  be  able  to 
pay  it ;  but  the  packers  were  unwilling  to  pay  it  —  they 
rejected  the  union  demand,  and  to  show  what  their  pur¬ 
pose  was,  a  week  or  two  after  the  agreement  expired  they 
put  down  the  wages  of  about  a  thousand  men  to  sixteen 
and  a  half  cents,  and  it  was  said  that  old  man  Jones  had 
vowed  he  would  put  them  to  fifteen  before  he  got  through. 
There  were  a  million  and  a  half  of  men  in  the  country 
poking  for  work,  a  huTidred  thousand  of  them  right  in 


THE  JUNGLE 


SI? 

Chicago  ;  and  were  the  packers  to  let  the  union  stewards 
march  into  their  places  and  bind  them  to  a  contract  that 
would  lose  them  several  thousand  dollars  a  day  for  a  year? 
Not  much  I 

All  tins  was  in  June ;  and  before  long  the  question  was 
submitted  to  a  referendum  in  the  unions,  and  the  decision 
was  for  a  strike.  It  was  the  same  in  all  the  packing-house 
cities  ;  and  suddenly  the  newspapers  and  public  woke  up 
to  face  the  grewsome  spectacle  of  a  meat  famine.  All  sorts 
of  pleas  for  a  reconsideration  were  made,  but  the  packers 
were  obdurate  ;  and  all  the  while  they  were  reducing 
wages,  and  heading  off  shipments  of  cattle,  and  rushing 
in  wagon-loads  of  mattresses  and  cots.  So  the  men  boiled 
over,  and  one  night  telegrams  went  out  from  the  union 
headquarters  to  all  the  big  packing  centres,  —  to  St.  Paul, 
South  Omaha,  Sioux  City,  St.  Joseph,  Kansas  City,  East 
St.  Louis,  and  New  York,  —  and  the  next  day  at  noon  be¬ 
tween  fifty  and  sixty  thousand  men  drew  off  their  work¬ 
ing  clothes  and  marched  out  of  the  factories,  and  the  great 
“  Beef  Strike  ”  was  on. 

Jurgis  went  to  his  dinner,  and  afterward  he  walked 
over  to  see  Mike  Scully,  who  lived  in  a  fine  house,  upon  a 
street  which  had  been  decently  paved  and  lighted  for  his 
especial  benefit.  Scully  had  gone  into  semi-retirement, 
and  looked  nervous  and  worried.  “What  do  you  want?” 
he  demanded,  when  he  saw  Jurgis. 

“  I  came  to  see  if  maybe  you  could  get  me  a  place  during 
the  strike,”  the  other  replied. 

And  Scully  knit  his  brows  and  eyed  him  narrowly.  In 
that  morning’s  papers  Jurgis  had  read  a  fierce  denuncia¬ 
tion  of  the  packers  by  Scully,  who  had  declared  that  if 
they  did  not  treat  their  people  better  the  city  authorities 
would  end  the  matter  by  tearing  down  their  plants. 
Now,  therefore,  Jurgis  was  not  a  little  taken  aback  when 
the  other  demanded  suddenly,  “See  here,  Rudkus,  why 
don’t  you  stick  by  your  job  ?  ” 

Jurgis  started.  “  Work  as  a  scab  ?  ”  he  cried. 

“  Why  not?”  demanded  Scully.  “What’s  that  to  you?*" 


318 


THE  JUNGLE 


“But  —  but  —  ”  stammered  Jurgis.  He  had  somehow 
taken  it  for  granted  that  he  should  go  out  with  his  union 

“  The  packers  need  good  men,  and  need  them  bad,"  con¬ 
tinued  the  other,  “and  they’ll  treat  a  man  right  that 
stands  by  them.  Why  don’t  you  take  your  chance  and 
fix  yourself  ?  ” 

“  But,’’  said  Jurgis,  “how  could  I  ever  be  of  any  use 
to  you  —  in  politics  ?  ’’ 

“  You  couldn’t  be  it  anyhow,’’  said  Scully,  abruptly. 

“  Why  not?  ’’  asked  Jurgis. 

“  Hell,  man  !  ’’  cried  the  other.  “  Don’t  you  know 
you’re  a  Republican  ?  And  do  you  think  I’m  always  going 
to  elect  Republicans  ?  My  brewer  has  found  out  already 
how  we  served  him,  and  there  is  the  deuce  to  pay.’’ 

Jurgis  looked  dumfounded.  He  had  never  thought  of 
that  aspect  of  it  before.  “  I  could  be  a  Democrat,’’  he  said. 

“Yes,’’  responded  the  other,  “but  not  right  away;  a 
man  can’t  change  his  politics  every  day.  And  besides,  I 
don’t  need  you  — -  there’d  be  nothing  for  you  to  do.  And 
it’s  a  long  time  to  election  day,  anyhow  ;  and  what  are 
you  going  to  do  meantime  ?  ’’ 

“  I  thought  I  could  count  on  you,’’  began  Jurgis. 

“Yes,”  responded  Scully,  “so  you  could  —  I  never  yet 
went  back  on  a  friend.  But  is  it  fair  to  leave  the  job  I 
got  you  and  come  to  roe  for  another  ?  I  have  had  a  hun* 
dred  fellows  after  me  to-day,  and  what  can  I  do  ?  I’ve  put 
seventeen  men  on  the  city  pay-roll  to  clean  streets  this  one 
week,  and  do  you  think  I  can  keep  that  up  forever?  It 
wouldn’t  do  for  me  to  tell  other  men  what  I  tell  you,  but 
you’ve  been  on  the  inside,  and  you  ought  to  have  sense 
enough  to  see  for  yourself.  What  have  you  to  gain  by  a 
strike  ?  ” 

“  I  hadn’t  thought,”  said  Jurgis. 

“ Exactly,”  said  Scully,  “but  you’d  better.  Take  my 
word  for  it,  the  strike  will  be  over  in  a  few  days,  and  the 
men  will  be  beaten  ;  and  meantime  what  you  get  out  of  it 
will  belong  to  you.  Do  you  see  ?” 

And  Jurgis  saw.  He  went  back  to  the  yards,  and  into 
the  work-room.  The  men  had  left  a  long  line  of  hogs  in 


THE  JUNGLE 


319 


various  stages  of  preparation,  and  the  foreman  was  direct¬ 
ing  the  feeble  efforts  of  a  score  or  two  of  clerks  and  stenog¬ 
raphers  and  office-boys  to  finish  up  the  job  and  get  them 
into  the  chilling-rooms.  Jurgis  went  straight  up  to  him 
and  announced,  “  I  have  come  back  to  work,  Mr. 
Murphy.” 

The  boss’s  face  lighted  up.  “  Good  man  I  ”  he  cried. 
“  Come  ahead  !  ” 

“Just  a  moment,”  said  Jurgis,  checking  his  enthusiasm. 
“  I  think  I  ought  to  get  a  little  more  wages.” 

“Yes,”  replied  the  other,  “of  course.  What  do  you 
want  ?  ” 

Jurgis  had  debated  on  the  way.  His  nerve  almost 
failed  him  now,  but  he  clenched  his  hands.  “  I  think  I 
ought  to  have  three  dollars  a  day,”  he  said. 

“  All  right,”  said  the  other,  promptly ;  and  before  the 
day  was  out  our  friend  discovered  that  the  clerks  and 
stenographers  and  office-boys  were  getting  five  dollars  a 
day,  and  then  he  could  have  kicked  himself  I 

So  Jurgis  became  one  of  the  new  “American  heroes,”  a 
man  whose  virtues  merited  comparison  with  those  of  the 
martyrs  of  Lexington  and  Valley  Forge.  The  resem¬ 
blance  was  not  complete,  of  course,  for  Jurgis  was  gener¬ 
ously  paid  and  comfortably  clad,  and  was  provided  with 
a  spring-cot  and  a  mattress  and  three  substantial  meals  a 
day;  also  he  was  perfectly  at  ease,  and  safe  from  all  peril  of 
life  and  limb-  save  only  in  the  case  that  a  desire  for  beer 
should  lead  nim  to  venture  outside  of  the  stockyards 
gates.  And  even  in  the  exercise  of  tliis  privilege  he  was 
not  left  unprotected ;  a  good  part  of  the  inadequate  police 
force  of  Chicago  was  suddenly  diverted  from  its  work  of 
hunting  criminals,  and  rushed  out  to  serve  him. 

The  police,  and  the  strikers  also,  were  determined  that 
there  should  be  no  violence ;  but  there  was  another  party 
interested  which  was  minded  to  the  contrary  —  and  that 
was  the  press.  On  the  first  day  of  his  life  as  a  strike¬ 
breaker  Jurgis  quit  work  early,  and  in  a  spirit  of  bravado 
he  challenged  three  men  of  his  acquaintance  to  go  outside 


320 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  get  a  drink.  They  acceptea,  and  went  through  the  big 
Halsted  Street  gate,  where  several  policemen  were  watch¬ 
ing,  and  also  some  union  pickets,  scanning  sharply  those  who 
passed  in  and  out.  Jurgis  and  his  companions  went  south 
on  Halsted  Street,  past  the  hotel,  and  then  suddenly  half 
a  dozen  men  started  across  the  street  toward  them  and 
proceeded  to  argue  with  them  concerning  the  error  of  their 
ways.  As  the  arguments  were  not  taken  in  the  proper 
spirit,  they  went  on  to  threats ;  and  suddenly  one  of  them 
jerked  off  the  hat  of  one  of  the  four  and  Sung  it  over  the 
fence.  The  man  started  after  it,  and  then,  as  a  cry  of 
“  Scab !  ”  was  raised  and  a  dozen  people  came  running  out 
of  saloons  and  doorways,  a  second  man’s  heart  failed  him 
and  he  followed.  Jurgis  and  the  fourth  stayed  long  enough 
to  give  themselves  the  satisfaction  of  a  quick  exchange  of 
blows,  and  then  they,  too,  took  to  their  heels  and  fled  back 
of  the  hotel  and  into  the  yards  again.  Meantime,  of  course, 
policemen  were  coming  on  a  run,  and  as  a  crowd  gathered 
other  police  got  excited  and  sent  in  a  riot-calL  Jurgis 
knew  nothing  of  this,  but  went  back  to  “  Packers’  Ave¬ 
nue,”  and  in  front  of  the  “  Central  Time-Station  ”  he  saw 
one  of  his  companions,  breathless  and  Virild  with  excite- 
ment,  narrating  to  an  ever  growing  throng  how  the  foui 
had  been  attacked  and  surrounded  by  a  howling  mob,  and 
had  been  nearly  torn  to  pieces.  While  he  stood  listening, 
smiling  cynically,  several  dapper  young  men  stood  by  with, 
note-books  in  their  hands,  and  it  was  not  more  than  two 
hours  later  that  Jurgis  saw  newsboys  running  about  with 
armfuls  of  newspapers,  printed  in  red  and  black  letters 
six  inches  high  :  — 

VIOLENCE  IN  THE  YARDS!  STRIKE-BREAKERS  SURr 
ROUNDED  BY  FRENZIED  MOB  I 

If  he  had  been  able  to  buy  all  of  the  newspapers  of  the 
United  States  the  next  morning,  he  might  have  discovered 
that  his  beer-hunting  exploit  was  being  perused  by  some 
two  score  millions  of  people,  and  had  served  as  a  text  for 
editorials  in  half  the  staid  and  solemn  business  men’s  news' 
papers  in  the  land. 


THE  JUNGLE 


321 


Jurgis  was  to  see  more  of  this  as  time  passed.  For  the 
present,  his  work  being  over,  he  was  free  to  ride  into  ’/he 
city,  by  a  railroad  direct  from  the  yards,  or  else  to  spend 
the  night  in  a  room  where  cots  had  been  laid  in  rows. 
He  chose  the  latter’,  but  to  his  regret,  for  all  night  long 
gangs  of  strike-breakers  kept  arriving.  As  very  few  of 
the  better  class  of  working-men  could  he  got  for  such  work, 
these  specimens  of  the  new  American  liero  contained  an 
assortment  of  the  criminals  and  thugs  of  the  city,  besides 
negroes  and  the  lowest  foreigners  —  Greeks,  Roumanians, 
Sicilians,  and  Slovaks.  They  had  been  attracted  more  by 
the  prospect  of  disorder  than  by  the  big  wages ;  and  they 
made  the  night  hideous  with  singing  and  carousing,  and 
only  went  to  sleep  when  the  time  came  for  them  to  get  up 
to  work. 

In  the  morning  before  Jurgis  had  finished  his  breakfast, 
“  Pat  ”  Murphy  ordered  him  to  one  of  the  superintendents, 
who  questioned  him  as  to  his  experience  in  the  work  of 
the  killing-room.  His  heart  began  to  thump  with  excite¬ 
ment,  for  he  divined  instantly  that  his  hour  had  come  — 
that  he  was  to  be  a  boss  1 

Some  of  the  foremen  were  union  members,  and  many 
who  were  not  had  gone  out  with  the  men.  It  was  in  the 
killing  department  that  the  packers  had  been  left  most  in 
the  lurch,  and  precisely  here  that  they  could  least  afford 
it ;  the  smoking  and  canning  and  salting  of  meat  might 
wait,  and  all  the  by-products  might  be  wasted  —  but 
fresh  meats  must  be  had,  or  the  restaurants  and  hotels  and 
brown-stone  houses  would  feel  the  pinch,  and  then  “public 
opinion  ”  would  take  a  startling  turn. 

An  opportunity  such  as  this  would  not  come  twice  to  a 
man  ;  and  Jurgis  seized  it.  Yes,  he  knew  the  work,  the 
whole  of  it,  and  he  could  teach  it  to  others.  But  if  he 
took  the  job  and  gave  satisfaction  he  would  expect  to  keep 
it  —  they  would  not  turn  him  off  at  the  end  of  the  strike  ? 
To  which  the  superintendent  replied  that  he  might  safely 
trust  Durham’s  for  that  —  they  proposed  to  teach  these 
unions  a  lesson,  and  most  of  ail  those  foremen  who  had 
gone  back  on  them.  Jurgis  would  receive  five  dollars  a 


322 


THE  JUNGLE 


day  during  the  strike,  and  twenty-five  a  week  after  it  was 
settled. 

So  our  friend  got  a  pair  of  “  slaughter-pen  ”  boots  and 
“jeans,”  and  flung  himself  at  his  task.  It  was  a  weird 
sight,  there  on  the  killing-beds  —  a  throng  of  stupid  black 
negroes,  and  foreigners  who  could  not  understand  a  word 
that  was  said  to  them,  mixed  with  pale-faeed,  hollow¬ 
chested  bookkeepers  and  clerks,  half-fainting  for  the 
tropical  heat  and  the  sickening  stench  of  fresh  blood  — 
and  all  struggling  to  dress  a  dozen  or  two  of  cattle  in  the 
same  place  where,  twenty-four  hours  ago,  the  old  killing- 
gang  had  been  speeding,  with  their  marvellous  precision, 
turning  out  four  hundred  carcasses  every  hour  1 

The  negroes  and  the  “  toughs  ”  from  the  Levee  did  not 
want  to  v/ork,  and  every  few  minutes  some  of  them  would 
feel  obliged  to  retire  and  recuperate.  In  a  couple  of  dayn 
Durham  and  Company  had  electric  fans  up  to  cool  off  th(j 
rooms  for  them,  and  even  couches  for  them  to  rest  on ;  and 
meantime  they  could  go  out  and  find  a  shady  corner  and 
take  a  “  snooze,”  and  as  there  was  no  place  for  any  one  in 
particular,  and  no  system,  it  might  be  hours  before  their 
boss  discovered  them.  As  for  the  poor  office  employees, 
they  did  their  best,  moved  to  it  by  terror;  thirty  of  them 
had  been  “  fired  ”  in  a  bunch  that  first  morning  for  refus¬ 
ing  to  serve,  besides  a  number  of  women  clerks  and 
typewriters  who  had  declined  to  act  as  waitresses. 

It  was  such  a  force  as  this  that  Jurgis  had  to  organize. 
He  did  his  best,  flying  here  and  there,  placing  them  in 
rows  and  showing  them  the  tricks ;  he  had  never  given  an 
order  in  his  life  before,  but  he  had  taken  enough  of  them 
to  know,  and  he  soon  fell  into  the  spirit  of  it,  and  roared 
and  stormed  like  any  old  stager.  He  had  not  the  most 
tractable  pupils,  hovzever.  “  See  hyar,  boss,”  a  big  black 
“  buck  ”  v/ould  begin,  “  ef  you  doan’  like  de  way  Ah  does 
dis  job,  you  kin  git  somebody  else  to  do  it.”  Then  a  crowd 
would  gather  and  listen,  muttering  threats.  After  the  first 
meal  nearly  all  the  steel  knives  had  been  missing,  and  now 
every  negro  had  one,  ground  to  a  fine  point,  hidden  in  his 
boots. 


THE  JUNGLE 


323 


There  was  no  bringing  order  out  of  such  a  chaos,  Jurgis 
soon  discovered ;  and  he  fell  in  with  the  spirit  of  the  thing 
—there  was  no  reason  why  he  should  wear  himself  out 
with  shouting.  If  hides  and  guts  were  slashed  and  ren¬ 
dered  useless  there  Avas  no  way  of  tracing  it  to  any  one : 
and  if  a  man  lay  off  and  forgot  to  come  back  there  was 
nothing  to  be  gained  by  seeking  him,  for  all  the  rest  would 
quit  in  the  meantime.  Everything  went,  during  the  strike, 
and  the  packers  paid.  Before  long  Jurgis  found  that  the 
custom  of  resting  had  suggested  to  some  alert  minds  the 
possibility  of  registering  at  more  than  one  place  and  earn¬ 
ing  more  than  one  live  dollars  a  day.  When  he  caught  a 
man  at  this  he  fired  ”  him,  but  it  chanced  to  be  in  a  quiet 
corner,  and  the  man  tendered  him  a  ten-dollar  bill  and  a 
wink,  and  he  took  them.  Of  course,  before  long  this  cus¬ 
tom  spread,  and  Jurgis  was  soon  making  quite  a  good 
income  from  it. 

In  the  face  of  handicaps  such  as  these  the  packers 
counted  themselves  lucky  if  they  could  kill  off  the  cattle 
that  had  been  crippled  in  transit  and  the  hogs  that  had 
developed  disease.  Frequently,  in  the  course  of  a  two  or 
three  days’  trip,  in  hot  weather  and  without  water,  some 
hog  would  deA’elop  cholera,  and  die ;  and  the  rest  would 
attack  him  before  he  had  ceased  kicking,  and  whevi  the  car 
was  opened  there  would  be  nothing  of  him  left  but  the 
bones.  If  all  the  hogs  in  this  car-load  were  not  killed  at 
once,  they  would  soon  be  down  with  the  dread  disease,  and 
there  would  be  nothing  to  do  but  make  them  into  lard. 
It  was  the  same  with  cattle  that  were  gored  and  dying,  or 
were  limping  with  broken  bones  stuck  through  their  flesh 
—  they  must  be  killed,  even  if  brokers  and  buyers  and 
superintendents  had  to  take  off  their  coats  and  help  drive 
and  cut  and  skin  them.  And  meantime,  agents  of  the 
packers  were  gathering  gangs  of  negroes  in  the  country 
districts  of  the  far  South,  promising  them  five  dollars  a  day 
and  board,  and  being  careful  not  to  mention  there  was  a 
strike ;  already  car-loads  of  them  were  on  the  way,  with 
special  rates  from  the  railroads,  and  all  traffic  ordered  out 
of  the  way.  Ma;Dy  towns  and  cities  were  taking  advantage 


824 


THE  JUNGLE 


of  the  chance  to  clear  out  their  jails  and  work-houses  —  ii» 
Detroit  the  magistrates  would  release  every  man  who 
agreed  to  leave  town  within  twenty-four  hours,  and  agents 
of  the  packers  were  in  the  court-rooms  to  ship  them  right. 
And  meantime  train-loads  of  supplies  were  coming  in  for 
their  accommodation,  including  beer  and  whiskey,  so  that 
they  might  not  be  tempted  to  go  outside.  They  hired 
thirty  young  girls  in  Cincinnati  to  “pack  fruit,”  and 
when  they  arrived  put  tliem  at  work  canning  corned-beef, 
and  put  cots  for  them  to  sleep  in  a  public  hallway,  through 
which  the  men  passed.  As  the  gangs  came  in  day  and 
night,  under  the  escort  of  squads  of  police,  they  stowed 
them  away  in  unused  work-rooms  and  store-rooms,  and  in 
the  car-sheds,  crowded  so  closely  together  that  the  cots 
touched.  In  some  places  they  would  use  the  same  room 
for  eating  and  sleeping,  and  at  night  the  men  would  put 
their  cots  upon  the  tables,  to  keep  away  from  the  swarms 
of  rats. 

But  with  all  their  best  efforts,  the  packers  were  demor¬ 
alized.  Ninety  per  cent  of  the  men  had  walked  out ;  and 
they  faced  the  task  of  completely  remaking  their  labor 
force  —  and  with  the  price  of  meat  up  thirty  per  cent,  and 
the  public  clamoring  for  a  settlement.  They  made  an 
offer  to  submit  the  whole  question  at  issue  to  arbitration ; 
and  at  the  end  of  ten  days  the  unions  accepted  it,  and  the 
strike  was  called  off.  It  was  agreed  that  all  the  men  were 
to  be  reemployed  within  forty-five  days,  and  that  there 
was  to  be  “  no  discrimination  against  union  men.” 

Thus  was  an  anxious  time  for  Jurgis.  If  the  men 
were  taken  back  “  without  discrimination,”  he  would  lose 
his  present  place.  He  sought  out  the  superintendent,  who 
smiled  grimly  and  bade  him  “  wait  and  see.”  Durham's 
strike-breakers  were  few  of  them  leaving. 

Whether  or  not  the  “  settlement  ”  was  simply  a  trick  of 
the  packers  to  gam  time,  or  whether  they  really  expected 
to  break  the  strike  and  cripple  the  unions  by  the  plan,  cart- 
not  be  said;  but  that  night  there  went  out  from  the  office 
of  Durham  and  Company  a  telegram  to  all  the  big  packing- 
centres,  “  Employ  no  union  leaders.”  And  in  the  ^aaornr 


THE  JUIv^GLE 


325 


ing,  when  the  twenty  thousand  men  thronged  into  the 
yards,  with  their  dinner-pails  and  working-clothes,  Jurgis 
stood  near  the  door  of  the  hog-trimming  room,  where  he  ^ 
had  worked  before  the  strike,  and  saw  a  tlirong  of  eager 
men,  with  a  score  or  two  of  policemen  watching  them  ;  and 
he  saw  a  superintendent  come  out  and  walk  down  the  line, 
and  pick  out  man  after  man  that  pleased  him ;  and  one 
after  another  came,  and  there  were  some  men  up  near  the 
head  of  the  line  who  were  never  picked  —  they  being  the 
union  stewards  and  delegates,  and  the  men  Jurgis  had 
heard  making  speeches  at  the  meetings.  Each  time,  of 
course,  there  were  louder  murmurings  and  angrier  looks. 
Over  where  the  cattle-butchers  were  waiting,  Jurgis  heard 
shouts  and  saw  a  crowd,  and  he  hurried  there.  One  big 
butcher,  who  was  president  of  the  Packing  Trades  Council, 
had  been  passed  over  five  times,  and  the  men  were  wild 
with  rage ;  they  had  appointed  a  committee  of  three  to 
go  in  and  see  the  superintendent,  and  the  committee  had 
made  three  attempts,  and  each  time  the  police  had  clubbed 
them  back  from  the  door.  Then  there  were  j'-ells  and  hoots, 
continuing  until  at  last  the  superintendent  came  to  the 
door.  “We  all  go  back  or  none  of  us  do  I  ”  ciied  a  hun-  \ 
dred  voices.  And  the  other  shook  his  fist  at  them,  and 
shouted,  “You  went  out  of  here  like  cattle,  and  like 
cattle  you’ll  come  back  I  ” 

Then  suddenly  the  big  butcher  president  leaped  upon 
a  pile  of  stones  and  yelled  :  “It’s  off,  boys.  We’ll  all  of 
us  quit  again  1  ”  And  so  the  cattle-butchers  declared  a  new 
strike  on  the  spot ;  and  gathering  their  members  from  the 
other  plants,  where  the  same  trick  had  been  played,  they 
marched  down  Packers’  Avenue,  which  was  thronged  with 
a  dense  mass  of  workers,  cheering  wildly.  Men  who  had 
already  got  to  work  on  the  killing-beds  dropped  their 
tools  and  joined  them  ;  some  galloped  here  and  there  on 
horseback,  shouting  the  tidings,  and  within  half  an  hour 
the  whole  of  Packirgtown  was  on  stril'^e  again,  and  beside 
itself  with  fury. 

There  was  quite  a  different  tone  in  Packingtown  after 


326 


THE  JUNGLE 


tliis  —  the  place  was  a  seething  caldron  of  passion,  and  the 
“scab”  who  ventured  into  it  fared  badly.  There  were 
one  or  two  of  these  incidents  each  day,  the  newspapers 
detailing  them,  and  always  blaming  them  upon,  the  unions. 
Yet  ten  years  before,  when  there  were  no  unions  in  Pack- 
ingtown,  there  was  a  strike,  and  national  troops  had  to  be 
called,  and  there  were  pitched  battles  fought  at  night,  by 
the  light  of  blazing  freight-trains.  Packingtown  was  al¬ 
ways  a  centre  of  violence  ;  in  “  Whiskey  Point,”  where 
there  were  a  hundred  saloons  and  one  glue-factory,  there 
was  always  fighting,  and  always  more  of  it  in  hot  weather. 
Any  one  who  had  taken  the  trouble  to  consult  the  station- 
house  blotter  would  have  found  that  there  was  less  vio¬ 
lence  that  summer  than  ever  before  —  and  this  while 
Venty  thousand  men  were  out  of  work,  and  with  nothing 
to  do  all  day  but  brood  upon  bitter  wrongs.  There  was 
no  one  to  picture  the  battle  the  union  leaders  were  fight¬ 
ing —  to  hold  this  huge  army  in  rank,  to  keep  it  from 
straggling  and  pillaging,  to  cheer  and  encourage  and 
guide  a  hundred  thousand  people,  of  a  dozen  different 
tongues,  through  six  long  weeks  of  hunger  and  disap¬ 
pointment  and  despair. 

Meantime  the  packers  had  set  themselves  definitely  to 
the  task  of  making  a  new  labor  force.  A  thousand  or 
two  of  strike-breakers  were  brought  in  every  night,  and 
distributed  among  the  various  plants.  Some  of  them  were 
experienced  workers,  —  butchers,  salesmen,  and  managers 
from  the  packers’  branch  stores,  and  a  few  union  men 
who  had  deserted  from  other  cities  ;  but  the  vast  major¬ 
ity  were  “  green  ”  negroes  from  the  cotton  districts  of  the 
far  South,  and  the}^  were  herded  into  the  packing-plants 
like  sheep.  There  was  a  law  forbidding  the  use  of  build¬ 
ings  as  lodging-houses  unless  they  were  licensed  for  the 
purpose,  and  provided  vdth  proper  windows,  stairways, 
and  fire-escapes  ;  but  here,  in  a  “  paint-room,”  reached 
only  by  an  enclosed  “  chute,”  a  room  without  a  single 
window  and  only  one  door,  a  hundred  men  were  crowded 
upon  mattresses  on  the  floor.  Up  on  the  third  story  of  the 
“  hog-house  ”  of  J ones’s  was  a  store-room,  without  a  win 


THE  JUNGLE 


32? 


dow,  into  which  they  crowded  seven  hundred  men,  sleeps 
iug  upon  the  bare  springs  of  cots,  and  with  a  second  shift 
to  use  them  by  day.  And  when  the  clamor  of  the  public 
led  to  an  investigation  into  these  conditions,  and  the  mayor 
of  the  city  was  forced  to  order  the  enforcement  of  the  law, 
the  packers  got  a  judge  to  issue  an  injunction  forbidding 
him  to  do  it  I 

Just  at  this  time  the  mayor  was  boasting  that  he  had 
put  an  end  to  gambling  and  prize-fighting  in  the  city ; 
but  here  a  swarm  of  professional  gamblers  had  leagued 
themselves  with  the  police  to  fleece  the  strike-breakers ; 
and  any  night,  in  the  big  open  space  in  front  of  Brown’s, 
one  might  see  brawny  negroes  stripped  to  the  waist  and 
pounding  each  other  for  money,  while  a  howling  throng 
of  three  or  four  thousand  surged  about,  men  and  women, 
young  white  girls  from  the  country  rubbing  elbows  with 
big  buck  negroes  with  daggers  in  their  boots,  while  rows 
of  woolly  heads  peered  down  from  every  window  of  the 
surrounding  factories.  The  ancestors  of  these  black  people 
had  been  savages  in  Africa  ;  and  since  then  they  had  been 
chattel  slaves,  or  had  been  held  down  by  a  community 
ruled  by  the  traditions  of  slavery.  Now  for  the  first  time 
they  were  free,  —  free  to  gratify  every  passion,  free  to 
wreck  themselves.  They  were  wanted  to  break  a  strike, 
and  when  it  was  broken  they  would  be  shipped  away,  and 
their  present  masters  would  never  see  them  again ;  and  so 
whiskey  and  women  were  brought  in  by  the  car-load  and 
sold  to  them,  and  hell  was  let  loose  in  the  yards.  Every 
night  there  were  stabbings  and  shootings ;  it  was  said  that 
the  packers  had  blank  permits,  which  enabled  them  to  ship 
dead  bodies  from  the  city  without  troubling  the  authori¬ 
ties.  They  lodged  men  and  women  on  the  same  floor ;  and 
with  the  night  there  began  a  saturnalia  of  debauchery  — 
scenes  such  as  never  before  had  been  witnessed  in  America. 
And  as  the  women  were  the  dregs  from  the  brotliels  of 
Chicago,  and  the  men  were  for  the  most  part  ignorant 
country  negroes,  the  nameless  diseases  of  vice  were  soon 
rife  ;  and  this  where  food  was  being  handled  which  was 
sent  out  to  every  corner  of  the  civilized  world. 


328 


THE  JUNGLE 


The  **  Union  Stockyards  ”  were  never  a  pleasant  place ; 
but  now  they  were  not  only  a  collection  of  slaughter¬ 
houses,  but  also  the  camping-place  of  an  army  of  fifteen  oi 
twenty  thousand  human  beasts.  All  day  long  the  blazing 
midsummer  sun  beat  down  upon  that  square  mile  of 
abominations :  upon  tens  of  thousands  of  cattle  crowded 
into  pens  whose  wooden  floors  stank  and  steamed  conta¬ 
gion;  upon  bare,  blistering,  cinder-strewn  railroad-tracks, 
and  huge  blocks  of  dingy  meat-factories,  whose  labyrinthine 
passages  defied  a  breath  of  fresh  air  to  penetrate  them  ; 
and  there  were  not  merely  rivers  of  hot  blood,  and  car- 
loads  of  moist  flesh,  and  rendering- vats  and  soap-caldrons, 
glue-factories  and  fertilizer  tanks,  that  smelt  like  the 
craters  of  hell  —  there  were  also  tons  of  garbage  festering 
in  the  sun,  and  the  greasy  laundry  of  the  workers  hung 
out  to  dry,  and  dining-rooms  littered  with  food  and  black 
with  flies,  and  toilet-rooms  that  were  open  sewers. 

And  then  at  night,  when  this  throng  poured  out  into 
the  streets  to  play — fighting,  gambling,  drinking  and 
carousing,  cursing  and  screaming,  laughing  and  singing, 
playing  banjoes  and  dancing  !  They  were  worked  in  the 
yards  all  the  seven  days  of  the  week,  and  they  had  their 
prize-fights  and  crap-games  on  Sunday  nights  as  well;  but 
then  around  the  corner  one  might  see  a  bonfire  blazing, 
and  an  old,  gray-headed  negress,  lean  and  witchlike,  her 
hair  flying  wild  and  her  eyes  blazing,  yelling  and  chanting 
of  the  fires  of  perdition  and  the  blood  of  the  “  Lamb,” 
while  men  and  women  lay  down  upon  the  ground  and 
moaned  and  screamed  in  convulsions  of  terror  and  remorse. 

Such  were  the  stockyards  during  the  strike ;  while  the 
unions  watched  in  sullen  despair,  and  the  country  clamored 
like  a  greedy  child  for  its  food,  and  the  packers  went 
grimly  on  their  wa.y.  Each  day  they  added  new  workers, 
and  could  be  more  stern  with  the  old  ones  —  could  put 
them  on  piece-work,  and  dismiss  them  if  they  did  not  keep 
up  the  pace.  Jurgis  was  now  one  of  their  agents  in  this 
process ;  and  he  could  feel  the  change  .day  by  day,  like 
the  slow  starting  up  of  a  huge  machine.  He  had  gotten 
used  to  being  a  master  of  men;  and  because  of  the  stifling 


THE  JUNGLE 


329 


heat  and  the  stench,  and  the  fact  that  he  was  a  “  scab  ” 
and  knew  it  and  despised  himself,  he  was  drinking,  and 
developing  a  villainous  temper,  and  he  stormed  and  cursed 
and  raged  at  his  men,  and  drove  them  until  they  were 
ready  to  drop  with  exhaustion. 

Then  one  day  late  in  August,  a  superintendent  ran  into 
the  place  and  shouted  to  Jurgis  and  his  gang  to  drop 
their  work  and  come.  They  followed  him  outside,  to 
where,  in  the  midst  of  a  dense  throng,  they  saw  several 
two-horse  trucks  waiting,  and  three  patrol-wagon  loads  of 
police.  Jurgis  and  his  men  sprang  upon  one  of  the  trucks, 
and  the  driver  yelled  to  the  crowd,  and  they  went  thunder¬ 
ing  away  at  a  gallop.  Some  steers  had  just  escaped  from 
the  yards,  and  the  strikers  had  got  hold  of  them,  and  there 
would  be  the  chance  of  a  scrap  I 

They  went  out  at  the  Ashland  Avenue  gate,  and  over 
in  the  direction  of  the  “  dump.”  There  was  a  yell  as  soon 
as  they  were  sighted,  men  and  women  rushing  out  of  houses 
and  saloons  as  they  galloped  by.  There  were  eight  or  ten 
policemen  on  the  truck,  however,  and  there  was  no  dis¬ 
turbance  until  they  came  to  a  place  where  the  street  was 
blocked  with  a  dense  throng.  Those  on  the  flying  truck 
yelled  a  warning  and  the  crowd  scattered  pell-mell,  dis¬ 
closing  one  of  the  steers  lying  in  its  blood.  There  were 
a  good  many  cattle-butchers  about  just  then,  witii  nothing 
much  to  do,  and  hungry  children  at  heme ;  and  so  some  one 
had  knocked  out  the  steer  —  and  as  a  first-class  man  can 
kill  and  dress  one  in  a  couple  of  minutes,  ther°!  were  a 
good  many  steaks  and  roasts  already  missing.  This  called 
for  punishment,  of  course ;  and  the  police  proceeded  to  ad¬ 
minister  it  by  leaping  from  the  truck  and  cracking  at  every 
head  they  saw.  There  were  yells  of  rage  and  pain,  and 
the  terrified  people  fled  into  houses  and  stores,  or  scattered 
helter-skelter  down  the  street.  J urgis  and  his  gang  joined 
in  the  sport,  every  man  singling  out  his  victim,  and  striv¬ 
ing  to  bring  him  to  bay  and  punch  him.  If  he  fled  into 
a  house  his  pursuer  would  smash  in  the  flimsy  door  and 
follow  him  up  the  stairs,  hitting  every  one  who  came 
22 


330 


THE  JUNGLE 


witliin  reacli,  and  finally  dragging  his  squealing  quarry 
from  under  a  bed  or  a  pile  of  old  clothes  in  a  closet. 

Jurgis  and  two  policemen  chased  some  men  into  a  bar¬ 
room.  One  of  them  took  shelter  behind  the  bar,  where  a 
policeman  cornered  him  and  proceeded  to  whack  him  over 
the  back  and  shoulders,  until  he  lay  down  and  gave  a 
chance  at  his  head.  The  others  leaped  a  fence  in  the  rear, 
balking  the  second  policeman,  who  was  fat ;  and  as  he  came 
back,  furious  and  cursing,  a  big  Polish  woman,  the  owner 
of  the  saloon,  rushed  in  screaming,  and  received  a  poke  in 
the  stomach  that  doubled  her  up  on  the  floor.  Meantime 
Jurgis,  who  was  of  a  practical  temper,  was  helping  himself 
at  the  bar ;  and  the  first  policeman,  who  had  laid  out  his 
man,  joined  him,  handing  out  several  more  bottles,  and 
filling  his  pockets  besides,  and  then,  as  he  started  to  leave, 
cleaning  off  all  the  balance  with  a  sweep  of  his  club.  The 
din  of  the  glass  crashing  to  the  floor  brought  the  fat  Po¬ 
lish  woman  to  her  feet  again,  but  another  policeman  came 
up  behind  her  and  put  his  knee  into  her  back  and  his 
hands  over  her  eyes  —  and  then  called  to  his  companion, 
who  went  back  and  broke  open  the  cash-drawer  and  filled 
his  pockets  with  the  contents.  Then  the  three  went  out¬ 
side,  and  the  man  who  was  holding  the  woman  gave  her  a 
shove  and  dashed  out  himself.  The  gang  having  already 
got  the  carcass  on  to  the  truck,  the  party  set  out  at  a  trot, 
followed  by  screams  and  curses,  and  a  shower  of  bricks 
and  stones  from  unseen  enemies.  These  bricks  and  stones 
would  figure  in  the  accounts  of  the  “  riot  ”  which  would 
be  sent  out  to  a  few  thousand  newspapers  within  an  hour 
or  two  ;  but  the  episode  of  the  cash-drawer  would  never 
be  mentioned  again,  save  only  in  the  heart-breaking  legends 
of  Packingtown. 

It  was  late  in  the  afternoon  when  they  got  back,  and 
they  dressed  out  the  remainder  of  the  steer,  and  a  couple 
of  others  that  had  been  killed,  and  then  knocked  off  for 
the  day.  Jurgis  went  down-town  to  supper,  with  three 
friends  who  had  been  on  the  other  trucks,  and  they  ex¬ 
changed  reminiscences  on  the  way.  Afterward  they 


THE  JUNGLE 


331 


drifted  into  a  roulette-parlor,  and  Jurgis,  who  was  never 
lucky  at  gambling,  dropped  about  fifteen  dollars.  To 
console  himself  he  had  to  drink  a  good  deal,  and  he  went 
back  to  Packingtown  about  two  o’clock  in  the  morning, 
very  much  the  worse  for  his  excursion,  and,  it  must  be 
confessed,  entirely  deserving  the  calamity  that  was  in  store 
for  him. 

As  he  was  going  to  the  place  where  he  slept,  he  met  a 
painted-cheeked  woman  in  a  greasy  “kimono,”  and  she 
put  her  arm  about  his  waist  to  steady  him ;  they  turned 
into  a  dark  room  they  were  passing  —  but  scarcely  had 
they  taken  two  steps  before  suddenly  a  door  swung  open, 
and  a  man  entered,  carrying  a  lantern.  “  Who’s  there  ?  ” 
he  called  sharply.  And  Jurgis  started  to  mutter  some 
reply ;  but  at  the  same  instant  the  man  raised  his  light, 
which  flashed  in  his  face,  so  that  it  was  possible  to  recog¬ 
nize  him.  Jurgis  stood  stricken  dumb,  and  his  heart  gave 
a  leap  like  a  mad  thing.  The  man  was  Connor  1 

Connor,  the  boss  of  the  loading  gang  I  The  man  who 
had  seduced  his  wife  —  who  had  sent  him  to  prison,  and 
wrecked  his  home,  and  ruined  his  life  I  He  stood  there, 
staring,  with  the  light  shining  full  upon  him. 

Jurgis  had  often  thought  of  Connor  since  coming  back 
to  Packingtown,  but  it  had  been  as  of  something  far  off, 
that  no  longer  concerned  him.  Now,  however,  when  he 
saw  him,  alive  and  in  the  flesh,  the  same  thing  happened 
to  him  that  had  happened  before  —  a  flood  of  rage  boiled 
up  in  him,  a  blind  frenzy  seized  him.  And  he  flung  him¬ 
self  at  the  man,  and  smote  him  between  the  eyes  —  and 
then,  as  he  fell,  seized  him  by  the  tliroat  and  began  to 
pound  his  head  upon  the  stones. 

The  woman  began  screaming,  and  people  came  rushing 
in.  The  lantern  had  been  upset  and  extinguished,  and  it 
was  so  dark  they  could  not  see  a  thing ;  but  they  could 
hear  Jurgis  panting,  and  hear  the  thumping  of  his  victim’s 
skull,  and  they  rushed  there  and  tried  to  pull  him  off. 
Precisely  as  before,  Jurgis  came  away  with  a  piece  of  his 
enemy’s  flesh  between  his  teeth  ;  and,  as  before,  he  went 
on  fighting  with  those  who  had  interfered  with  him. 


332 


THE  JUNGLE 


until  a  policeman  had  come  and  beaten  him  in  to  insensi¬ 
bility. 

And  so  Jurgis  spent  the  balance  of  the  night  in  the 
stockyards  station-house.  This  time,  however,  he  had 
money  in  his  pocket,  and  when  he  came  to  his  senses  he 
could  get  something  to  drink,  and  also  a  messenger  to 
take  word  of  his  plight  to  “  Bush”  Harper.  Harper  did 
not  appear,  however,  until  after  the  prisoner,  feeling 
very  weak  and  ill,  had  been  haled  into  court  and  re¬ 
manded  at  five  hundred  dollars'  bail  to  await  the  result  of 
his  victim’s  injuries.  Jurgis  was  wild  about  this,  because 
a  different  magistrate  had  chanced  to  be  on  the  bench, 
and  he  had  stated  that  he  had  never  been  arrested  before, 
and  also  that  he  had  been  attacked  first  —  and  if  only 
some  one  had  been  there  to  speak  a  good  word  for  him, 
he  could  have  been  let  off  at  once. 

But  Harper  explained  that  he  had  been  down-town,  and 
had  not  got  the  message.  “•  What’s  happened  to  you  ?  ” 
he  asked. 

‘H’ve  been  doing  a  fellow  up,”  said  Jurgis,  “and  I’ve 
got  to  get  five  hundred  dollars’  bail.” 

“  I  can  arrange  that  all  right,”  said  the  other  — 
“  though  it  may  cost  you  a  few  dollars,  of  course.  But 
what  was  the  trouble  ?  ” 

“  It  was  a  man  that  did  me  a  mean  trick  once,”  an¬ 
swered  Jurgis. 

“  Who  is  he  ?  ” 

“  He’s  a  foreman  in  Brown’s  —  or  used  to  be.  His 
name’s  Connor.” 

And  the  other  gave  a  start.  “  Connor  I  ”  he  cried. 
“  Not  Phil  Connor  !  ” 

“  Yes,”  said  Jurgis,  “  that’s  the  fellow.  Why  ?” 

“  Good  God  !  ”  exclaimed  the  other,  “  then  you’re  in  for 
it,  old  man  1  I  can’t  help  you  !  ” 

“  Not  help  me  I  Why  not  ?  ” 

“  Why,  he’s  one  of  Scully’s  biggest  men  —  he’s  a  mem¬ 
ber  of  the  War-Whoop  League,  and  they  talked  of  sending 
him  to  the  legislature  1  Phil  Connor  I  Great  heavens  I  ’’ 


THE  JUNGLE 


333 


Jnrgis  sat  dumb  with  dismay. 

“  Why,  he  can  send  you  to  Joliet,  if  he  wants  to  I  ”  de¬ 
clared  the  other. 

Can’t  I  have  Scully  get  me  off  before  he  finds  out 
about  it  ?  ”  asked  Jurgis,  at  length. 

“  But  Scully’s  out  of  town,”  the  other  answei’ed.  I 
don’t  even  know  where  he  is —he’s  run  away  to  dodge 
the  strike/’ 

That  was  a  pretty  mess,  indeed.  Poor  Jurgis  sat  half- 
dazed,  His  pull  had  run  up  against  a  bigger  pull,  and 
he  was  down  and  out  I  “But  what  am  I  going  to  do  ?” 
he  asked,  weakly. 

“  How  should  I  know  ?  ”  said  the  other.  “  I  shouldn’t 
even  dare  to  get  bail  for  you  —  why,  1  might  ruin  myself 
for  life  I  ” 

Again  there  was  silence.  “Can’t  you  do  it  for  me,” 
Jurgis  asked,  “  and  pretend  that  you  didn’t  know  who  I’d 
hit  ?  ” 

“  But  what  good  would  that  do  you  when  you  came  to 
stand  trial  ?  ”  asked  Harper.  Then  he  sat  buried  in 
thought  for  a  minute  or  two.  “  There’s  nothing  —  unless 
it’s  this,”  he  said.  “  I  could  have  your  ball  reduced  ;  and 
then  if  you  had  the  money  you  could  pay  it  and  skip.” 

“How  much  will  it  be?”  Jurgis  asked,  after  he  had 
had  this  explained  more  in  detail. 

“  I  don’t  know,”  said  the  other.  “  How  much  do  you 
own  ?  ” 

“  I’ve  got  about  three  hundred  dollars,”  was  the  answer. 

“  Well,”  was  Harper’s  reply,  “  I’m  not  sure,  but  I’ll 
try  and  get  you  off  for  that.  I’ll  take  the  risk  for  friend¬ 
ship’s  sake  —  for  I’d  hate  to  see  you  sent  to  state’s  prison 
for  a  year  or  two.” 

And  so  finally  Jurgis  ripped  out  his  bank-book  —  which 
was  sewed  up  in  his  trousers  —  and  signed  an  order, 
which  “  Bush  ”  Harper  wrote,  for  all  the  money  to  be  paid 
out.  Then  the  latter  went  and  got  it,  and  hurried  to  the 
court,  and  explained  to  the  magistrate  that  Jurgis  was  a 
decent  fellow  and  a  friend  of  Scully’s,  who  had  been  at¬ 
tacked  by  a  strike-breaker.  So  the  bail  was  reduced  to 


THE  JUHGLE 


ibree  hundred  dollars,  and  Harper  went  on  it  himself  ;  he 
did  not  tell  this  to  Jurgis,  however  —  nor  did  he  tell  him 
that  when  the  time  for  trial  came  it  would  be  an  easy 
matter  for  him  to  avoid  the  forfeiting  of  the  bail,  and 
pocket  the  three  hundred  dollars  as  his  reward  for  the  risk 
of  offending  Mike  Scully !  Ail  that  he  told  Jurgis  was  that 
he  was  now  free,  and  that  the  best  thing  he  could  do  was 
to  clear  out  as  quickly  as  possible  ;  and  so  Jurgis,  over¬ 
whelmed  with  gratitude  and  relief,  took  the  dollar  and 
fourteen  cents  that  was  left  him  out  of  all  his  bank 
account,  and  put  it  with  the  two  dollars  and  a  quartet 
that  was  left  from  his  last  night’s  celebration,  and  boarded 
a  street-car  and  got  ofi;  at  the  other  end  of  Chicago. 


CHAPTER  XXVIl 


Poor  Jurgis  was  now  an  outcast  and  a  tramp  once 
more.  He  was  crippled  —  he  was  as  literally  crippled  as 
any  wild  animal  which  has  lost  its  claws,  or  been  torn  out 
of  its  shell.  He  had  been  shorn,  at  one  cut,  of  all  those 
mysterious  weapons  whereby  he  had  been  able  to  make  a 
living  easily  and  to  escape  the  consequences  of  his  actions. 
He  could  no  longer  command  a  job  when  he  wanted  it  5 
he  could  no  longer  steal  with  impunity  —  he  must  take 
his  chances  with  the  common  herd.  Nay  worse,  he  dared 
not  mingle  with  the  herd  —  he  must  hide  by  himself,  for 
he  was  one  marked  out  for  destruction.  His  old  com¬ 
panions  would  betray  him,  for  the  sake  of  the  influence 
they  would  gain  thereby ;  and  he  would  be  made  to  suffer, 
not  merely  for  the  offence  he  had  committed,  but  for 
others  which  would  be  laid  at  his  door,  just  as  had  been 
done  for  some  poor  devil  on  the  occasion  of  that  assault 
upon  the  “  country  customer  ”  by  him  and  Duane. 

And  also  he  labored  under  another  handicap  now.  He 
had  acquired  new  standards  of  living,  which  were  not 
easily  to  be  altered.  When  he  had  been  out  of  work  be¬ 
fore,  he  had  been  content  if  he  could  sleep  in  a  doorway 
or  under  a  truck  out  of  the  rain,  and  if  he  could  get  fifteen 
cents  a  day  for  saloon  lunches.  But  now  he  desired  all 
sorts  of  other  things,  and  suffered  because  he  had  to  do 
without  them.  He  must  have  a  drink  now  and  then,  a 
drink  for  its  own  sake,  and  apart  from  the  food  that  came 
with  it.  The  craving  for  it  was  strong  enough  to  master 
every  other  consideration — he  would  have  it,  though  it 
were  his  last  nickel  and  he  had  to  starve  the  balance  of 
the  day  in  consequence. 


335 


336 


THE  JUKHLE 


Jurgis  became  once  more  a  besieger  of  factory  gates. 
But  never  since  be  had  been  in  Chicago  had  he  stood  less 
chance  of  getting  a  job  than  just  then.  For  one  thing, 
there  was  the  economic  crisis,  the  million  or  two  of  men 
who  had  been  out  of  work  in  the  spring  and  summer,  and 
were  not  yet  all  back,  by  any  means.  And  then  there 
was  the  strike,  with  seventy  thousand  men  and  women  all 
over  the  country  idle  for  a  couple  of  months — twenty 
thousand  in  Chicago,  and  many  of  them  now  seeking  work 
throughout  the  city.  It  did  not  remedy  matters  that  a 
few  days  later  the  strike  was  given  up  and  about  half  the 
strikers  went  back  to  work  ;  for  every  one  taken  on, 
there  was  a  “  scab  ”  who  gave  up  and  fled.  The  ten  or 
fifteen  thousand  “green  negroes,  foreigners,  and  criminals 
were  now  being  turned  loose  to  shift  for  themselves. 
Everywhere  Jurgis  went  he  kept  meeting  them,  and  he 
was  in  an  agony  of  fear  least  some  one  of  them  should 
know  that  he  was  “wanted.”  He  would  have  left 
Chicago,  only  by  the  time  he  had  realized  his  danger  he 
was  almost  penniless  ;  and  it  would  be  better  to  go  to  jail 
than  to  be  caught  out  in  the  country  in  the  winter-time. 

At  the  end  of  about  ten  days  Jurgis  had  only  a  few 
pennies  left ;  and  he  had  not  yet  found  a  job  —  not  even 
a  day's  work  at  anything,  not  a  chance  to  carry  a  sateheL 
Once  again,  as  when  he  had  come  out  of  the  hospital,  he 
was  bound  hand  and  foot,  and  facing  the  grisly  phantom 
of  starvation.  Raw,  naked  terror  possessed  him,  a  madden¬ 
ing  passion  that  would  never  leave  him,  and  that  wore  him 
down  more  quickly  than  the  actual  want  of  food.  He  was 
going  to  die  of  hunger  I  The  fiend  reached  out  its  scaly 
arms  for  him  —  it  touched  him,  its  breath  came  into  his 
face;  and  he  would  cry  out  for  the  awfulness  of  it,  he 
would  wake  up  in  the  night,  shuddering,  and  bathed  m 
perspiration,  and  start  up  and  flee.  He  would  walk,  beg¬ 
ging  for  work,  until  he  was  exhausted  |  he  could  net  remain 
still  —  he  would  wander  on,  gaunt  and  haggard,  gazing 
about  him  with  restless  eyes.  Everywhere  he  went,  from 
one  end  of  the  vast  city  to  the  other,  there  were  hundreds  of 
others  like  him ;  everywhere  was  the  sight  of  pienri  - 


THE  JimGLE 


337 


'and  the  merciless  hand  of  authority  waving  them  away. 
There  is  one  kind  of  prison  where  the  man  is  behind  bars, 
and  everything  that  he  desires  is  outside  ;  and  there  is 
another  kind  where  the  things  are  behind  the  bars,  and 
the  man  is  outside. 

When  he  was  down  to  his  last  quarter,  Jurgis  learned 
that  before  the  bakeshops  closed  at  night  they  sold  out 
what  was  left  at  half  price,  and  after  that  he  would,  go 
and  get  two  loaves  of  stale  bread  for  a  nickel,  and  break 
them  up  and  stuff  his  pockets  with  them,  munching  a  bit 
from  time  to  time.  He  would  not  spend  a  penny  save  for 
this;  and,  after  two  or  three  days  more,  he  even  became 
sparing  of  the  bread,  and  would  stop  and  peer  into  the  ash- 
barrels  as  he  walked  along  the  streets,  and  now  and  then 
rake  out  a  bit  of  something,  shake  it  free  from  dust,  and 
count  himself  just  so  many  minutes  further  from  the 
end. 

So  for  several  days  he  had  been  going  about,  ravenous 
ail  the  time,  and  growing  weaker  and  weaker ;  and  then 
one  morning  he  had  a  hideous  experience,  that  almost 
broke  his  heart.  He  was  passing  down  a  street  lined  with 
warehouses,  and  a  boss  offered  him  a  job,  and  then,  after 
he  had  started  to  work,  turned  him  off  because  he  was  not 
strong  enough.  And  he  stood  by  and  saw  another  man 
put  into  his  place,  and  then  picked  up  his  coat,  and  walked 
off,  doing  all  that  he  could  to  keep  from  breaking  down 
and  crying  like  a  baby.  He  was  lost  i  He  was  doomed ! 
There  was  no  hope  for  him  I  Bub  then,  witli  a  sudden 
rush,  his  fear  gave  place  to  rage.  He  fell  to  cursing.  He 
would  come  back  there  after  dark,  and  he  would  show 
that  scoundrel  whether  he  was  good  for  anything  or  not  I 

He  was  still  muttering  this  when  suddenly,  at  the  cor- 
ner,  he  came  upon  a  green-grocery,  with  a  tray  full  of 
cabbages  in  front  of  it.  Jurgis,  after  one  swift  glance 
about  him,  stooped  and  seized  the  biggest  of  them,  and 
darted  round  the  corner  with  it.  There  was  a  hue  and 
cry,  and  a  score  of  men  and  boys  started  in  chase  of  him ; 
but  he  came  to  an  alley,  and  then  to  another  branching 


338 


THE  JTOGLE 


off  from  it  and  leading  him  into  another  street,  where  he 
fell  into  a  walk,  and  slipped  his  cabbage  under  his  coat 
and  went  off  unsuspected  in  the  crowd.  When  he  had 
gotten  a  safe  distance  away  he  sat  down  and  devoured 
half  the  cabbage  raw,  stowing  the  balance  away  in  his 
pockets  till  the  next  day. 

Just  about  this  time  one  of  the  Chicago  newspapers, 
which  made  much  of  the  ‘‘common  people,”  opened  a 
“free-soup  kitchen”  for  the  benefit  of  the  unemployed. 
Some  people  said  that  they  did  this  for  the  sake  of  the 
advertising  it  gave  them,  and  some  others  said  that  their 
motive  was  a  fear  lest  all  their  readers  should  be  starved 
off ;  but  whatever  the  reason,  the  soup  was  thick  and  hot, 
and  there  was  a  bowl  for  every  man,  ail  night  long. 
When  Jurgis  heard  of  this,  from  a  fellow  “  hobo,”  he 
vowed  that  he  would  have  half  a  dozen  howls  before 
morning ;  but,  as  it  proved,  he  was  lucky  to  get  one,  for 
there  was  a  line  of  men  two  blocks  long  before  the  stand, 
and  there  was  just  as  long  a  line  when  the  place  was  finally 
closed  up. 

This  depot  was  within  the  danger-line  for  Jurgis — -in 
the  “  Levee  ’’  district,  where  he  was  known;  but  he  went 
there,  all  the  same,  for  he  was  desperate,  and  beginning 
to  think  of  even  the  Bridewell  as  a  place  of  refuge.  So 
far  the  weather  had  been  fair,  and  he  had  slept  out  every 
night  in  a  vacant  lot ;  but  now  there  fell  suddenly  a  shadow 
of  the  advancing  winter,  a  chill  wind  from  the  north  and  2 
driving  storm  of  rain.  That  day  Jurgis  bought  two  drinks 
for  the  sake  of  the  shelter,  and  at  night  he  spent  his  last 
two  pennies  in  a  “stale-beer  dive.”  This  was  a  place  kept 
by  a  negro,  who  went  out  and  drew  off'  the  old  dregs  of 
beer  that  laj'-  in  barrels  set  outside  of  the  saloons ;  and  after 
he  had  doctored  it  with  chemicals  to  make  it  “  fizz,”  he 
sold  it  for  two  cents  a  can,  the  purchase  of  a  can  including 
the  privilege  of  sleeping  the  night  through  upon  the  floor, 
with  a  mass  of  degraded  outcasts,  men  and  women. 

All  these  horrors  afflicted  Jurgis  all  the  more  cruelly, 
because  he  was  always  contrasting  them  with  the  oppor¬ 
tunities  he  had  lost.  For  instance,  just  now  it  was  election 


THE  JUNGLE 


339 


time  again  —  within  five  or  six  weeks  the  voters  ot  the 
country  would  select  a  President ;  and  he  heard  the 
wretches  with  whom  he  associated  discussing  it,  and  saw 
the  streets  of  the  city  decorated  with  placards  and  banners 
—  and  what  words  could  describe  the  pangs  ot  grief  and 
despair  that  shot  through  him  ? 

For  instance,  there  was  a  night  during  this  cold  spell. 
He  had  begged  all  day,  for  his  very  life,  and  found  not  a 
soul  to  lieed  him,  until  toward  evening  he  saw  an  old 
lady  getting  off  a  street-car  and  helped  her  down  with  her 
umbrellas  and  bundles,  and  then  told  her  his  hard-luck 
story,”  and  after  answering  all  her  suspicious  questions 
satisfactorily,  was  taken  to  a  restau'rant  and  saw  a  quarter 
paid  down  for  a  meal.  And  so  he  had  soup  and  bread, 
and  boiled  beef  and  potatoes  and  beans,  and  pie  and 
coffee,  and  came  out  with  his  skin  stuffed  tight  as  a  foot¬ 
ball.  And  then,  through  the  rain  and  the  darkness,  far 
down  the  street  he  saw  red  lights  flaring  and  heard  the 
thumping  of  a  bass-drum  ;  and  his  heart  gave  a  leap,  and 
he  made  for  the  place  on  the  run-— knowing  without  the 
asking  that  it  meant  a  political  meeting. 

The  campaign  had  so  far  been  characterized  by  what 
the  newspapers  termed  “apathy.”  For  some  reason  the 
people  refused  to  get  excited  over  the  struggle,  and  it  was 
almost  impossible  to  get  them  to  come  to  meetings,  or  to 
make  any  noise  when  they  did  come.  Those  which  had 
been  held  in  Chicago  so  far  had  proven  most  dismal 
failures,  and  to-night,  the  speaker  being  no  less  a  person¬ 
age  than  a  candidate  for  the  vice-presidency  of  the  nation, 
the  political  managers  had  been  trembling  with  anxiety. 
But  a  merciful  Providence  had  sent  this  storm  of  cold  rain 
> — and  now  all  it  was  necessary  to  do  was  to  set  off  a  few 
fireworks,  and  thump  awhile  on  a  drum,  and  all  the  home¬ 
less  wretches  from  a  mile  around  would  pour  in  and  fid 
the  hall !  And  then  on  the  morrow  the  newspapers  would 
have  a  chance  to  report  the  tremendous  ovation,  and  to  add 
that  it  had  been  no  “silk-stocking”  audience,  either,  proving 
clearly  that  the  high-tariff  sentiments  of  the  distinguished 
candidate  w’ere  pleasing  to  the  wage-earners  of  the  nation 


840 


THE  JUNGLE 


So  Jui’gis  found  himself  in  a  large  hall,  elaborately  dec- 
orated  with  flags  and  bunting ;  and  after  the  chairman 
had  made  his  little  speech,  and  the  orator  of  the  evening- 
rose  up,  amid  an  uproar  from  the  band  —  only  fancy  the 
emotions  of  Jurgis  upon  making  the  discovery  that  the 
personage  was  none  other  than  the  famous  and  eloquent 
Senator  Spareshanks,  who  had  addressed  the  “  Doyle  Re¬ 
publican  Association  ”  at  the  stockyards,  and  helped  to 
elect  Mike  Scully’s  ten-pin  setter  to  the  Chicago  Board  of 
Aldermen  I 

In  truth,  the  sight  of  the  senator  almost  brought  the  tears 
into  Jurgis’s  eyes.  What  agony  it  was  to  him  to  look  back 
upon  those  golden  hours,  when  he,  too,  had  a  place  beneath 
the  shadow  of  the  plum  tree !  When  he,  too,  had  been  of 
the  elect,  through  whom  the  country  is  governed  —  when 
he  had  had  a  bung  in  the  campaign-barrel  for  his  own  1 
And  this  was  another  election  in  which  the  Republicans 
had  all  the  money ;  and  but  for  that  one  hideous  accident 
he  might  have  had  a  share  of  it,  instead  of  being  where  he 
was  I 

The  eloquent  senator  was  explaining  the  system  of  Pro¬ 
tection  ;  an  ingenious  device  whereby  the  working-man  per¬ 
mitted  the  manufacturer  to  charge  him  higher  prices,  in 
order  that  he  might  receive  higher  wages ;  thus  taking  his 
money  out  of  his  pocket  with  one  hand,  and  putting  a  part 
of  it  back  with  thp-  other.  To  the  senator  this  unique 
arrangement  had  somehow  become  identified  with  the 
higher  verities  of  the  universe.  It  was  because  of  it  that 
Columbia  waa  the  gem  of  the  ocean ;  and  all  her  future 
triumphs,  her  power  and  good  repute  among  the  nations, 
depended  I’pon  the  zeal  and  fidelity  with  which  each  citi¬ 
zen  held  up  the  hands  of  those  who  were  tolling  to  main¬ 
tain  it.  The  name  of  this  heroic  company  was  “the 
Grand  Old  Party  ”  — 

And  here  the  band  began  to  play,  and  Jurgis  sat  up  with 
a  violent  start.  Singular  as  it  may  seem,  J  urgis  was  making 
a  desperate  effort  to  understand  what  the  senator  was  say¬ 
ing —  to  comprehend  the  extent  of  American  prosperity 


THE  JUNGLE 


341 


tbe  enormous  expansion  of  American  commerce,  and  the 
Republic’s  future  in  the  Pacific  and  in  South  America,  and 
wherever  else  the  oppressed  were  groaning.  The  reason 
for  it  was  that  he  wanted  to  keep  awake.  He  knew  that 
if  he  allowed  himself  to  fall  asleep  he  would  begin  to  snore 
loudly;  and  so  he  must  listen  —  he  must  be  interested! 
But  he  had  eaten  such  a  big  dinner,  and  he  was  so  ex¬ 
hausted,  and  the  hall  was  so  warm,  and  his  seat  was  so  com¬ 
fortable  1  The  senator's  gaunt  form  began  to  grow  dim 
and  hazy,  to  tower  before  him  and  dance  about,  with  figures 
of  exports  and  imports.  Once  his  neighbor  gave  him  a 
savage  poke  in  the  ribs,  and  he  sat  up  with  a  start  and 
tried  to  look  innocent;  but  then  he  was  at  it  again,  and 
men  began  to  stare  at  him  with  annoyance,  and  to  call  out 
in  vexation.  Finally  one  of  them  called  a  policeman,  who 
came  and  grabbed  Jurgis  by  the  collar,  and  jerked  him  to 
his  feet,  bewildered  and  terrified.  Some  of  the  audience 
turned  to  see  the  commotion,  and  Senator  Spareshanks 
faltered  in  his  speech ;  but  a  voice  shouted  cheerily : 
“We’re  just  firing  a  bum  I  Go  ahead,  old  sport  1  ”  And  so 
the  crowd  roared,  and  the  senator  smiled  genially,  and  went 
on  ;  and  in  a  few  seconds  poor  Jurgis  found  himself  landed 
out  in  the  rain,  with  a  kick  and  a  string  of  curses. 

He  got  into  the  shelter  of  a  doorway  and  took  stock  of 
himself.  He  was  not  hurt,  and  he  was  not  arrested — more 
than  he  had  any  right  to  expect.  He  swore  at  himself  and 
his  luck  for  a  while,  and  then  turned  his  thoughts  to  prac¬ 
tical  matters.  He  had  no  money,  and  no  place  to  sleep; 
he  must  begin  begging  again. 

He  went  out,  hunching  his  shoulders  together  and  shiver¬ 
ing  at  the  touch  of  the  icy  rain.  Coming  down  the  street 
toward  him  was  a  lady,  well-dressed,  and  protected  by  an 
umbrella ;  and  he  turned  and  walked  beside  her.  “  Please, 
ma’am,” he  began,  “  could  you  lend  me  the  price  of  a  night’s 
lodging?  I’m  a  poor  working-man  —  ” 

Then,  suddenly,  he  stopped  short.  By  the  light  of  a 
street  lamp  he  had  caught  sight  of  the  lady’s  face.  He 
knew  her. 

It  was  Alena  Jasaityte,  who  had  been  the  belle  of  hia 


342 


THE  JUNGLE 


wedding-feast  I  Alena  Jasaityte,  who  had  looked  so  beau* 
tiful,  and  danced  with  such  a  queenly  air,  with  .Tuozaa 
Raczius,  the  teamster!  Jurgis  had  only  seen  her  once  or 
twice  afterward,  for  Juozas  had  thrown  her  over  for  an¬ 
other  girl,  and  Alena  had  gone  away  from  Packingtown, 
no  one  knew  where.  And  now  he  met  her  here  1 

She  was  as  much  surprised  as  he  was.  ‘‘Jurgis  Rudkus  I  ” 
she  gasped.  “  And  what  in  the  world  is  the  matter  with 
you?” 

“I  —  I’ve  had  hard  luck,”  he  stammered.  “ I’m  out  of 
work,  and  I’ve  no  home  and  no  money.  And  you,  Alena 
—  are  you  married  ?  ” 

“No,”  she  answered,  “I’m  not  married,  but  I’ve  got  a 
good  place.” 

They  stood  staring  at  each  other  for  a  few  moments 
longer.  Finallj;-  Alena  spoke  again.  “Jurgis,”  she  said, 
“I’d  help  you  if  I  could,  upon  my  word  I  would,  but  it 
happens  that  I’ve  come  out  without  my  purse,  and  I  hon¬ 
estly  haven’t  a  penny  with  me.  I  can  do  something  better 
for  you,  though  —  I  can  tell  you  how  to  get  help.  I  can 
tell  you  where  Marija  is.” 

Jurgis  gave  a  start.  “  Marija !  ”  he  gasped. 

“Yes,”  said  Alena;  “and  she’ll  help  you.  She’s  got  a 
place,  and  she’s  doing  well;  she’ll  be  glad  to  see  you.” 

It  was  not  much  more  than  a  year  since  -lurgis  had  left 
Packingtown,  feeling  like  one  escaped  from  jail ;  and  it 
bad  been  from  Marija  and  Elzbieta  that  he  was  escaping 
But  now,  at  the  mere  mention  of  them,  his  whole  being 
cried  out  with  joy.  He  wanted  to  see  them ;  he  wanted 
to  go  home  !  They  would  help  him  —  they  would  be  kind 
to  him.  In  a  flash  he  had  thought  over  the  situation.  He 
had  a  good  excuse  for  running  away  —  his  grief  at  the 
death  of  his  son ;  and  also  he  had  a  good  excuse  for  not 
returning — the  fact  that  they  had  left  Packingtown.  “  All 
right,”  he  said,  “I’ll  go.” 

So  she  gave  him  a  number  on  Clark  Street,  adding, 
“  There’s  no  need  to  give  you  my  address,  because  Marija 
knows  it.”  And  Jurgis  set  out,  without  furtlier  ado. 

He  found  a  large  brown-stone  house  of  aristocratic  ap- 


THE  JUNGLE 


343 


pearance,  and  rang  the  basement  bell.  A  young  colored 
girl  came  to  the  door,  opening  it  about  an  inch,  and  gazing 
at  him  suspiciously. 

“What  do  you  want?”  she  demanded. 

“Does  Marija  Berezynskas  live  here?”  he  inquired. 

“  I  dunno,”  said  the  girl.  “  What  you  want  wid  her  ?” 

“  I  want  to  see  her,”  said  he  ;'fehe’s  a  relative  of  mine.” 

The  girl  hesitated  a  moment.  Then  she  opened  the  door 
and  said,  “  Come  in.”  Jurgis  came  and  stood  in  the  hall, 
and  she  continued  :  “I’ll  go  see.  What’s  yo’  name?” 

“Tell  her  it’s  Jurgis,”  he  answered,  and  the  girl  went 
upstairs.  She  came  back  at  the  end  of  a  minute  or  two, 
and  replied,  “  Dey  ain’t  no  sich  person  here.” 

Jurgis’s  heart  went  down  into  his  boots.  “  I  was  told 
this  was  where  she  lived  !”  he  cried. 

But  the  girl  only  shook  her  head.  “  De  lady  says  dey 
ain’t  no  sich  person  here,”  she  said. 

And  he  stood  for  a  moment,  hesitating,  helpless  with 
dismay.  Then  he  turned  to  go  to  the  door.  At  the  same 
instant,  however,  there  came  a  knock  upon  it,  and  the  girl 
went  to  open  it.  Jurgis  heard  the  shuffling  of  feet,  and 
then  heard  her  give  a  cry ;  and  the  next  moment  she 
sprang  back,  and  past  him,  her  eyes  shining  white  with 
terror,  and  bounded  up  the  stairway,  screaming  at  the  top 
of  her  lungs  “  Police  1  Police  !  We' re  pinched  T' 

Jurgis  stood  for  a  second,  bewildered.  Then,  seeing 
blue-coated  forms  rushing  upon  him,  he  sprang  after  the 
negress.  Her  cries  had  been  the  signal  for  a  wild  uproar 
above;  the  house  was  full  of  people,  and  as  he  entered  the 
hallway  he  saw  them  rushing  hither  and  thither,  crying 
and  screaming  with  alarm.  There  were  men  and  women 
the  latter  clad  for  the  most  part  in  wrappers,  the  former  in 
all  stages  of  deshabille.  At  one  side  Jurgis  caught  a 
glimpse  of  a  big  apartment  with  plush-covered  chairs,  and 
tables  covered  with  trays  and  glasses.  There  were  play¬ 
ing-cards  scattered  all  over  the  floor — one  of  the  tables 
had  been  upset,  and  bottles  of  wine  were  rolling  about, 
their  contents  running  out  upon  the  carpet.  There  was  a 


844 


THE  JUNGLE 


young  girl  who  had  fainted,  and  two  men  who  were  sup¬ 
porting  her;  and  there  were  a  dozen  others  crowding 
toward  the  front-door. 

Suddenly,  however,  there  came  a  series  of  resounding 
blows  upon  it,  causing  the  crowd  to  give  back.  At  the 
same  instant  a  stout  woman,  with  painted  cheeks  and  dia¬ 
monds  in  her  ears,  came  running  down  the  stairs,  panting 
breathlessly  :  “  To  the  rear  I  Quick !  ” 

She  led  the  way  to  a  back  staircase,  Jurgis  following; 
in  the  kitchen  she  pressed  a  spring,  and  a  cupboard  gave 
way  and  opened,  disclosing  a  dark  passageway.  “  Go  in  I  ” 
she  cried  to  the  crowd,  which  now  amounted  to  twenty  or 
thirty,  and  they  began  to  pass  through.  Scarcely  had  the 
last  one  disappeared,  however,  before  there  were  cries  from 
in  front,  and  then  the  panic-stricken  throng  poured  out 
again,  exclaiming;  “  They’re  there  too  I  We’re  trapped  I  ” 

“  Upstairs  I  ”  cried  the  woman,  and  there  was  another 
rush  of  the  mob,  women  and  men  cursing  and  screaming 
and  fighting  to  be  first.  One  flight,  two,  three  — ■  and  then 
there  was  a  ladder  to  the  roof,  with  a  crowd  packed  at  the 
foot  of  it,  and  one  man  at  the  top,  straining  and  struggling 
to  lift  the  trap-door.  It  was  not  to  be  stirred,  however, 
and  when  the  woman  shouted  up  to  unhook  it,  he  answered; 
“  It’s  already  unhooked.  There’s  somebody  sitting  on  it  I  ” 

And  a  moment  later  came  a  voice  from  downstairs: 
“You  might  as  well  quit,  you  people.  We  mean  busine'^s, 
this  time.’’ 

So  the  crowd  subsided ;  and  a  few  moments  later  several 
policemen  came  up,  staring  here  and  there,  and  leering  at 
their  victims.  Of  the  latter  the  men  were  for  the  most 
part  frightened  and  sheepish-looking.  The  women  took  it 
as  a  joke,  as  if  they  were  used  to  it  —  though  if  they  had 
been  pale,  one  could  not  have  told,  for  the  paint  on  their 
cheeks.  One  black-eyed  young  girl  perched  herself  upon 
the  top  of  the  balustrade,  and  began  to  kick  with  her  slip¬ 
pered  foot  at  the  helmets  of  the  policemen,  until  one  ol 
them  caught  her  by  the  ankle  and  pulled  her  down.  On 
the  floor  below  four  or  five  other  girls  sat  upon  trunks  in 
the  hall,  making  fun  of  the  procession  which  filed  by  them 


THE  JUNGLE 


346 


They  were  noisy  and  hilarious,  and  had  evidently  been 
drinking;  one  of  them,  who  wore  a  bright  red  kimono, 
shouted  and  screamed  in  a  voice  that  drowned  out  all  the 
other  sounds  in  the  hall  —  and  Jurgis  took  a  glance  at  her, 
and  then  gave  a  start,  and  a  cry,  “  Marija  !  ” 

She  heard  him,  and  glanced  around ;  then  she  shrank 
back  and  half  sprang  to  her  feet  in  amazement.  “Jurgis !  ” 
she  gasped. 

h  or  a  second  or  two  they  stood  staring  at  each  other. 
“How  did  you  come  here?”  Marija  exclaimed. 

“  I  came  to  see  you,”  he  answered. 

“When?” 

“Just  now.” 

“Rut  how  did  you  know  —  who  told  you  I  was  here?” 

“Alena  Jasaityte.  I  met  her  on  the  street.” 

Again  there  was  a  silence,  while  they  gazed  at  each  other. 
The  rest  of  the  crowd  was  watching  them,  and  so  Marija 
got  up  and  came  closer  to  him.  “And  you?”  Jurgis 
asked.  “You  live  here?” 

“  Yes,”  said  Marija,  “I  live  here.” 

Then  suddenly  came  a  hail  from  below:  “Get  your 
clothes  on  now,  girls,  and  come  along.  You’d  best  begin, 
or  you’ll  be  sorry  —  it’s  raining  outside.” 

“  Rr-r-rl  ”  shivered  some  one,  and  the  women  got  up  and 
entered  the  various  doors  which  lined  the  hallway. 

“Come,”  said  Marija,  and  took  Jurgis  into  her  room, 
which  was  a  tiny  place  about  eight  by  six,  with  a  cot  and 
a  chair  and  a  dressing-stand  and  some  dresses  hanging  be¬ 
hind  the  door.  There  were  clothes  scattered  about  on  the 
floor,  and  hopeless  confusion  everywhere,  —  boxes  of  rouge 
and  bottles  of  perfume  mixed  with  hats  and  soiled  dishes 
on  the  dresser,  and  a  pair  of  slippers  and  a  clock  and  a 
whiskey  bottle  on  a  chair. 

Marija  had  nothing  on  but  a  kimono  and  a  pair  of  stock¬ 
ings;  yet  she  proceeded  to  dress  before  Jurgis,  and  with¬ 
out  even  taking  the  trouble  to  close  the  door.  He  had  by 
this  time  divined  what  sort  of  a  place  he  was  in ;  and  he 
had  seen  a  great  deal  of  the  world  since  he  had  left  home, 
and  was  not  easy  to  shock  —  and  yet  it  gave  him  a  paiufid 

23 


346 


THE  JUNGLE 


start  that  Marija  should  do  this.  They  had  always  been 
decent  people  at  home,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  old  times  ought  to  have  ruled  her.  But  then  he 
laughed  at  himself  for  a  fool.  What  was  he,  to  be  pre¬ 
tending  to  decency  I 

“  How  long  have  you  been  living  here  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“  Nearly  a  year,”  she  answered. 

“  Why  did  you  come  ?  ” 

“I  had  to  live,”  she  said;  “and  I  couldn’t  see  the  chib 
dren  starve.” 

He  paused  for  a  moment,  watching  her.  “You  were 
out  of  work  ?  ”  he  asked,  finally. 

“I  got  sick,”  she  replied,  “and  after  that  I  had  no 
money.  And  then  Stanislovas  died  —  ” 

“  Stanislovas  dead !  ” 

“  Yes,”  said  Marija,  “  I  forgot.  ITou  didn’t  know  about 
It.” 

“  How  did  he  die  ?  ” 

“  Rats  killed  him,”  she  answered. 

Jurgis  gave  a  gasp.  “  Rats  killed  him  I  ” 

“Yes,”  said  the  other;  she  was  bending  over,  lacing  her 
shoes  as  she  spoke.  “He  was  working  in  an  oil  factory  — 
at  least  he  was  hired  by  the  men  to  get  their  beer.  He 
^'used  to  carry  cans  on  a  long  pole  ;  and  he’d  drink  a  little 
.out  of  each  can,  and  one  day  he  drank  too  much,  and  fell 
^  asleep  in  a  corner,  and  got  locked  up  in  the  place  all  night. 
When  they  found  him  the  rats  had  killed  him  and  eaten 
him  nearly  all  up.” 

Jurgis  sat,  frozen  with  horror.  Marija  went  on  lacing 
ap  her  shoes.  There  was  a  long  silence. 

Suddenly  a  big  policeman  came  to  the  door.  “Hurry 
ap,  there,”  he  said. 

“  As  quick  as  I  can,”  said  Marija,  and  she  stood  up  and 
began  putting  on  her  corsets  with  feverish  haste. 

“  Are  the  rest  of  the  people  alive  ? ”  asked  Jurgis, finally. 

“Yes,”  she  said. 

“  Where  are  they  ?  ” 

“  They  live  not  far  from  here.  They’re  all  right  now.’’ 

“  They  are  working  ?  ”  he  inquired. 


THE  JUNGLE 


347 


“  Elzbieta  is,”  said  Marija,  “  when  she  can.  I  take  care 
of  them  most  of  the  time  —  I’m  making  plenty  of  money 
now.” 

Jurgis  was  silent  for  a  moment.  “Do  they  know  you 
live  here  —  how  you  live  ?  ”  he  asked. 

“  Elzbieta  knows,”  answered  Marija.  “  I  couldn’t  lie  to 
her.  And  maybe  the  children  have  found  out  by  this 
time.  It’s  nothing  to  be  ashamed  of  —  we  can’t  help 
it.” 


“  And  Tamoszius  ?  ”  he  asked.  “  Does  he  know  ?  ” 

Marija  shrugged  her  shoulders.  “How  do  I  know?” 
she  said.  “  I  haven’t  seen  him  for  over  a  year.  He  got 
blood-poisoning  and  lost  one  finger,  and  couldn’t  play  the 
violin  any  more  ;  and  then  he  went  away.” 

Marija  was  standing  in  front  of  the  glass  fastening  her 
dress.  Jurgis  sat  staring  at  her.  He  could  hardly  believe 
that  she  was  the  same  woman  he  had  known  in  the  old 
days ;  she  was  so  quiet  —  so  hard  !  It  struck  fear  to  his 
heart  to  watch  her. 

Then  suddenly  she  gave  a  glance  at  him.  “  You  look 
as  if  you  had  been  having  a  rough  time  of  it  yourself,” 
she  said. 

“  I  have,”  he  answered.  “  I  haven’t  S'  cent  in  my 
pockets,  and  nothing  to  do.” 

“  Where  have  you  been  ?  ” 

“  Ail  over.  I’ve  been  hoboing  it.  Then  I  went  back 
to  the  yai’ds — -just  before  the  strike.”  He  paused  for  a 
moment,  hesitating.  “  I  a.sked  for  you,”  he  added.  “  I 
found  you  had  gone  away,  no  one  knew  where.  Perhaps 
you  think  I  did  you  a  dirty  trick,  running  away  as  I  did, 
Marija  —  ” 

“No,”  she  answered,  “I  don't  blame  you.  We  never 
have — any  of  us.  You  did  your  best  —  the  job  was  too 
much  for  us.”  She  paused  a  moment,  then  added:  “  We 
were  too  ignorant  —  that  was  the  trouble.  W e  didn’t 
stand  any  chance.  If  I’d  known  what  I  know  now 
we’d  have  won  out.” 

“  You’d  have  come  here?”  said  Jurgis. 

“Yes,”  she  answered;  “but  that’s  not  what  I  meant 


348 


THE  JUNGLE 


I  meant  you  —  how  differently  you  would  have  behaved  — 
about  Ona.” 

Jurgis  was  silent;  he  had  never  thought  of  that  aspect 


of  it. 


“  When  people  are  starving,”  the  other  continued,  “and 
they  have  anything  with  a  price,  they  ought  to  sell  it,  I 
say.  1  guess  you  realize  it  now  when  it’s  too  late.  Ona 
could  have  taken  care  of  us  all,  in  the  beginning.”  Marija 
spoke  without  emotion,  as  one  who  had  come  to  regard 
things  from  the  business  point  of  view. 

“I — yes,  I  guess  so,”  Jurgis  answered  hesitatingly. 
He  did  not  add  that  he  had  paid  three  hundred  dollars,  and 
a  foreman’s  job,  for  the  satisfaction  of  knocking  down 
“  Phil  ”  Connor  a  second  time. 

The  policeman  came  to  the  door  again  just  then.  “  Come 
on,  now,”  he  said.  “  Lively  !  ” 

“  All  right,”  said  Marija,  reaching  for  her  hat,  which  was 
big  enough  to  be  a  drum-major’s,  and  full  of  ostrich  feathers. 
She  went  out  into  the  hall  and  Jurgis  followed,  the  police¬ 
man  remaining  to  look  under  the  bed  and  behind  the  door. 

“  What’s  going  to  come  of  this  ?  ”  Jurgis  asked,  as  they 
started  down  the  steps. 

“  The  raid,  you  mean  ?  Oh,  nothing  —  it  happens  to  us 
every  now  and  then.  The  madame’s  having  some  sort  of 
time  with  the  police  ;  I  don’t  know  what  it  is,  but  maybe 
they’ll  come  to  terms  before  morning.  Anyhow,  they 
won’t  do  anything  to  you.  They  always  let  the  men  off.” 

“  Maybe  so,”  he  responded,  “  but  not  me  —  I’m  afraid 
[’m  in  for  it.” 

“  How  do  you  mean  ?  ” 

“  I’m  wanted  by  the  police,”  he  said,  lowering  his  voice, 
though  of  course  their  conversation  was  in  Lithuanian. 

They’ll  send  me  up  for  a  year  or  two.  I’m  afraid.” 

“Hell!  ”  said  Marija.  “That’s  too  bad.  I’ll  see  if  I 
can’t  get  you  off.” 

Downstairs,  where  the  greater  part  of  the  prisoners  were 
now  massed,  she  sought  out  the  stout  personage  with  the 
diamond  earrings,  and  had  a  few  whispered  words  with  her. 
The  latter  then  approached  the  police  sergeant  who  was  in 


THE  JUNGLE 


349 


charge  of  the  raid.  “  Billy,”  she  said,  pointing  to  Jurgis, 
“  there’s  a  fellow  who  came  in  to  see  his  sister.  He’d  just 
got  in  the  door  when  you  Knocked.  You  aren’t  taking 
hoboes,  are  you  ?  ” 

The  sergeant  laughed  as  he  looked  at  .Jurgis.  “  Sorry,” 
he  said,  “but  the  orders  are  every  one  but  the  servants.” 

So  Jurgis  slunk  in  among  the  rest  of  the  men,  who  kept 
dodging  behind  each  other  like  sheep  that  have  smelt 
a  wolf.  There  were  old  men  and  young  men,  college  bo3^s 
and  graybeards  old  enougli  to  be  their  giandfathers ;  some 
of  them  wore  evening-dress  —  there  was  no  one  among 
them  save  Jurgis  who  showed  any  signs  of  poverty. 

When  the  round-up  was  completed,  the  doors  were 
opened  and  the  party  marched  out.  Three  patrol-wagons 
were  drawn  up  at  the  curb,  and  the  whole  neighborhood 
had  turned  out  to  see  the  sport ;  there  was  much  chaffing, 
and  a  universal  craning  of  necks.  The  women  stared 
about  them  with  defiant  eyes,  or  laughed  and  joked,  while 
the  men  kept  their  heads  bowed,  and  their  hats  pulled  over 
their  faces.  They  were  crowded  into  the  patrol-wagons  as 
if  into  street-cars,  and  then  off  they  went  amid  a  din  of 
cheers.  At  the  station-house  .Jurgis  gave  a  I^olish  name 
and  was  put  into  a  cell  with  half  a  dozen  others ;  and 
while  these  sat  and  talked  in  whispers,  he  lay  down  in  a 
corner  and  gave  himself  up  to  his  thoughts. 

Jurgis  had  looked  into  the  deepest  reaches  of  the  social 
pit,  and  grown  used  to  the  sights  in  them.  Yet  when 
he  had  thought  of  all  humanity  as  vile  and  hideous,  he  had 
somehow  always  excepted  his  own  family,  that  he  had 
loved;  and  now  this  sudden  horrible  discovery  —  Marija 
a  whore,  and  Elzbieta  and  the  children  living  off  her 
shame  !  Jurgis  might  argue  with  himself  all  he  chose,  that 
he  had  done  worse,  and  was  a  fool  for  caring  —  but  still 
he  could  not  get  over  the  shock  of  that  sudden  un¬ 
veiling,  he  could  not  help  being  sunk  in  grief  because  of  it. 
The  depths  of  him  were  troubled  and  shaken,  memories 
were  stirred  in  him  that  had  been  sleeping  so  long,  he  had 
counted  them  dead.  Memories  of  the  old  life  -G-~^s  old 
hopes  and  his  old  yearnings,  his  old  di^fiis  of  decency  and 


850 


THE  JUNGLE 


independencdj^lfe  saw  Ona,  again,  he  heard  her  gentle 
voice  pleading  with  saw  little  Antanas,  whom 

he  had  meant  to  make  a  mah^  'He  saw  his  trembling  old 
__ father,  who  had  blessed  them  all  with  his  wonderful  love. 
4  He  lived  again  through  that  day  of  horror  when  he  had 
discovered  Ona’s  shame  —  God,  how  he  had  suffered,  what 
a  madman  he  had  been !  How  dreadful  it  had  all  seemed 
to  him  ;  and  now,  to-day,  he  had  sat  and  listened,  and  half 
agreed  when  Marija  told  him  he  had  been  a  fool !  Yes — 
told  him  that  he  ought  to  have  sold^is  wife’s  honor  and 
lived  by  it !  —  And  then  there  wa^^tanislovas  and  his 
awful  fate  — that  brief  story  which  Marija  had  narrated  so 
calmly,  with  such  dull  indifference  !  The  poor  little  fellow, 
with  his  frost-bitten  fingers  and  his  terror  of  the  snow  — 
his  wailing  voice  rang  in  Jurgis’s  ears,  as  he  lay  there  in 
the  darkness,  until  the  sweat  started  on  his  forehead.  Now 
and  then  he  would  quiver  with  a  sudden  spasm  of  horror, 
at  the  picture  of  little  Stanislovas  shut  up  in  the  deserted 
building  and  fighting  for  his  life  with  the  rats ! 

All  these  emotions  had  become  strangers  to  the  soul  of 
Jurgis  ;  it  was  so  long  since  they  had  troubled  him  that  he 
had  ceased  to  think  they  might  ever  trouble  him  again. 
Helpless,  trapped,  as  he  was,  what  good  did  they  do  him — 
why  should  he  ever  have  allowed  them  to  torment  him? 
It  had  been  the  task  of  his  recent  life  to  fight  them  down. 
to  crush  them  out  of  him ;  never  in  his  life  would  he  have 
suffered  from  them  again,  save  that  they  had  caught  him 
unawares,  and  overwhelmed  him  before  he  could  protect 
himself.  He  heard  the  old  voices  of  his  soul,  he  saw  itP 
old  ghosts  beckoning  to  him,  stretching  out  their  arms  to 
him  !  But  they  were  far-off  and  shadowy,  and  the  guh 
between  them  was  black  and  bottomless  ;  they  would  fadf 
away  into  the  mists  of  the  past  once  more.  Their  voices 
would  die,  and  never  again  would  he  hear  them  —  and  so 
the  last  faint  spark  of  manhood  in  his  soul  would  Sicker 
out. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 


After  breakfast  Jurgis  was  driven  to  the  court,  which 
was  crowded  with  the  prisoners  and  those  who  had  come 
out  of  curiosity  or  in  the  hope  of  recognizing  one  of  the 
men  and  getting  a  case  for  blackmail.  The  men  were  called 
up  first,  and  reprimanded  in  a  bunch,  and  then  dismissed; 
but  Jurgis,  to  his  terror,  was  called  separately,  as  being  a 
suspicious-looking  case.  It  was  in  this  very  same  court 
that  he  had  been  tried,  that  time  when  his  sentence  had 
been  “suspended”;  it  was  the  same  judge,  and  tlie  same 
clerk.  The  latter  now  stared  at  J  urgis,  as  if  he  half  thought 
that  he  knew  him  ;  but  the  judge  had  no  suspicions  —  just 
then  his  thoughts  were  upon  a  telephone  message  he  was 
expecting  from  a  friend  of  the  police  captain  of  the  dis¬ 
trict,  telling  what  disposition  he  should  make  of  the  case 
of  “Folly”  Simpson,  as  the  “  madame  ”  of  the  house  was 
known.  Meantime,  he  listened  to  the  story  of  how  Jurgis 
had  been  looking  for  his  sister,  and  advised  him  dryly  to 
keep  his  sister  in  a  better  place ;  then  he  let  him  go,  and 
proceeded  to  fine  each  of  the  girls  five  dollars,  which  fines 
were  paid  in  a  bunch  from  a  wad  of  bills  which  Madame 
Polly  extracted  from  her  stocking. 

Jurgis  waited  outside  and  walked  home  with  Marija. 
The  police  had  left  the  house,  and  already  there  were  a  few 
visitors ;  by  evening  the  place  would  be  running  again, 
exactly  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Meantime,  i\Iarija 
took  Jurgis  upstairs  to  her  room,  and  they  sat  and  talked. 
By  daylight,  Jurgis  was  able  to  observe  that  the  color  on 
her  cheeks  was  not  the  old  natural  one  of  abounding 
health ;  her  complexion  was  in  reality  a  parchment  yellow, 
and  there  were  black  rings  under  her  eyes. 

“Have  you  been  sick?”  he  asked. 

351 


352 


THE  JUNGLE 


“Sick?”  she  said.  “Hell!”  (Marija  had  learned  to 
scatter  her  conversation  with  as  many  oaths  as  a  longshore¬ 
man  or  a  mule  driver.)  “  How  can  I  ever  be  anything  but 
sick,  at  this  life  ?  ” 

She  fell  silent  for  a  moment,  staring  ahead  of  her  gloom¬ 
ily.  “It’s  morphine,”  she  said,  at  last.  “I  seem  to  take 
more  of  it  every  day.” 

“What’s  that  for?”  he  asked. 

“  It’s  the  way  of  it ;  I  don’t  know  why.  If  it  isn’t  that, 
it’s  drink.  If  the  girls  didn’t  booze  they  couldn’t  stand  it 
any  time  at  all.  And  the  madame  always  gives  them  dope 
when  they  first  come,  and  they  learn  to  like  it ;  or  else  they 
take  it  for  headaches  and  such  things,  and  get  the  habit 
that  way.  I’ve  got  it,  I  know ;  I’ve  tried  to  quit,  but  I 
never  will  while  I’m  here.” 

“  How  Jong  are  you  going  to  stay?  ”  he  asked. 

“  I  don’t  know,”  she  said.  “  Always,  I  guess.  What 
else  could  I  do?  ” 

“Don’t  you  save  any  money?” 

“  Save  !  ”  said  Marija.  “  Good  Lord,  no  !  I  get  enough, 
I  suppose,  but  it  all  goes.  I  get  a  half  share,  two  dollars 
and  a  half  for  each  customer,  and  sometimes  I  make  twenty- 
five  or  thirty  dollars  a  night,  and  you’d  think  I  ought  to 
save  something  out  of  that  I  But  then  I  am  charged  for 
my  room  and  my  meals  —  and  such  prices  as  you  never 
heard  of;  and  then  for  extras,  and  drinks —  for  everything 
I  get,  and  some  I  don’t.  My  laundry  bill  is  nearly  twenty 
dollars  each  week  alone  —  think  of  that !  Yet  what  can.  I 
do?  I  either  have  to  stand  it  or  quit,  and  it  would  be  the 
same  anywhere  else.  It’s  all  I  can  do  to  save  the  fifteen 
dollars  I  give  Elzbieta  each  week,  so  the  children  can  go  to 
school.” 

Marija  sat  brooding  in  silence  for  a  while  ;  then,  seeing 
that  Jurgis  was  interested,  she  went  on  :  “  That’s  the  way 
they  keep  the  girls  —  they  let  them  run  up  debts,  so  they 
can’t  get  away.  A  young  girl  comes  from  abroad,  and  she 
doesn’t  know  a  word  of  English,  and  she  gets  into  a  place 
like  this,  and  when  she  wants  to  go  the  madame  shows  her 
that  she  is  a  couple  of  hundred  dollars  in  debt,  and  takes 


THE  JUNGLE 


353 


all  her  clothes  away,  and  threatens  to  have  her  arrested  if 
she  doesn’t  stay  and  do  as  she’s  told.  So  she  stays,  and 
the  longer  she  stays,  the  more  in  debt  slie  gets.  Often, 
too,  tliey  are  girls  that  didn’t  know  what  they  were  coming 
to,  that  had  hired  out  for  housework.  Did  you  notice  that 
little  French  girl  with  the  yellow  hair,  that  stood  next  to 
me  in  the  court  ?  ” 

Jurgis  answered  in  the  affirmative. 

“  W ell,  she  came  to  America  about  a  year  ago.  She 
was  a  store-clerk,  and  she  hired  herself  to  a  man  to  be  sent 
here  to  work  in  a  factory.  There  were  six  of  them,  all  to¬ 
gether,  and  they  were  brought  to  a  house  just  down  the 
street  from  here,  and  this  girl  was  put  into  a  room  alone, 
and  they  gave  her  some  dope  in  her  food,  and  wiien  she 
came  to  she  found  that  she  had  been  ruined.  She  cried, 
and  screamed,  and  tore  her  hair,  but  she  had  nothing  but  a 
wrapper,  and  couldn’t  get  away,  and  they  kept  her  half  insen¬ 
sible  with  drugs  all  the  time,  until  she  gave  up.  She 
never  got  outside  of  that  place  lor  ten  months,  and  then 
they  sent  her  away,  because  she  didn’t  suit.  I  guess  they’ll 
put  her  out  of  here,  too  —  she’s  getting  to  have  crazy  hts, 
from  drinking  absinthe.  Only  one  of  the  girls  that  came 
out  with  her  got  away,  and  she  jumped  out  of  a  second- 
story  window  one  night.  There  was  a  great  fuss  about 
that  —  maybe  y-na  heard  of  it.” 

“1  did,”  said  Jurgis,  “I  heard  of  it  afterward.”  (It 
had  happened  in  the  place  where  be  and  Duane  had  taken 
refuge  from  their  “•  country  customer.”  The  girl  had  be¬ 
come  insane,  fortunately  for  the  police.) 

“  There’s  lots  of  money  in  it,”  said  Marija  — “  they  get  as 
much  as  forty  dollars  a  head  for  girls,  and  they  bring  them 
from  all  over.  There  are  seventeen  in  this  place,  and  nine 
different  countries  among  them.  In  some  places  you  might 
find  even  more.  We  have  half  a  dozen  French  giils  — I 
suppose  it’s  because  the  madame  speaks  the  language. 
French  girls  are  bad,  too,  the  worst  of  all,  except  for  the 
Japanese.  There’s  a  place  next  door  that’s  full  of  Japanese 
women,  but  I  wouldn’t  live  in  the  same  house  with  one  of 
them.” 


354 


THE  JUNGLE 


Marija  paused  for  a  moment  or  two,  and  then  she 
added  :  “  Most  of  the  women  here  are  pretty  decent — 
you’d  be  surprised.  I  used  to  think  they  did  it  because 
they  liked  to ;  but  fancy  a  woman  selling  herself  to  every 
kind  of  man  that  comes,  old  or  young,  black  or  white  -* 
and  doing  it  because  she  likes  to  I  ” 

“Some  of  them  say  they  do,” said  Jurgis. 

“  I  know,”  said  she  ;  “  they  say  anything.  They’re  io^ 
and  they  know  they  can’t  get  out.  But  they  didn’t  like  iv 
when  they  began  —  you’d  find  out  —  it’s  always  misery! 
There’s  a  little  Jewish  girl  here  who  used  to  run  errands 
for  a  milliner,  and  got  sick  and  lost  her  place ;  and  she 
was  four  days  on  the  streets  without  a  mouthful  of  food, 
and  then  she  went  to  a  place  just  around  the  coriier  and 
offered  herself,  and  they  made  her  give  up  her  clothes 
before  they  would  give  her  a  bite  to  eat  1  ” 

Marija  sat  for  a  minute  or  two,  brooding  sombrely. 
“Tell  me  about  yourself,  Jurgis,”  she  said,  suddenly. 
“Where  have  you  been?” 

So  he  told  her  the  long  story  of  his  adventures  since  his 
flight  from  home ;  his  life  as  a  tramp,  and  his  work  in  the 
freight  tunnels,  and  the  accident ;  and  then  of  Jack  Duane, 
and  of  his  political  career  in  the  stockyards,  and  his  down* 
fall  and  subsequent  failures.  Marija  listened  with  sym- 
pathjr;  it  was  easy  to  believe  the  tale  of  Ms  late  starvation, 
for  his  face  showed  it  all.  “  You  found  me  just  in  the 
nick  of  time,”  she  said.  “  I’ll  stand  by  you  —  I’ll  help  you 
till  you  can  get  some  work.” 

“  I  don’t  like  to  let  you  —  ”  he  began. 

“  Why  not  ?  Because  I’m  here  ?  ” 

“  No,  not  that,”  he  said.  “  But  I  went  off  and  left  you  — ** 
“  Nonsense  I  ”  said  Marija.  “  Don’t  think  about  it.  I 
don’t  blame  you.” 

“  You  must  be  hungry,”  she  said,  after  a  minute  or 
two.  “You  stay  here  to  lunch' — I’ll  have  something  up 
in  the  room.” 

She  pressed  a  button,  and  a  colored  woman  came  to  the 
door  and  took  her  order.  “  It’s  nice  to  have  somebody  to 
wait  on  you,”  she  observed,  with  a  laugh,  as  she  lay  back 
on  the  bed. 


THE  JUNGLE 


355 


As  the  prison  breakfast  had  not  been  liberal,  Jurgis  had 
sA  good  appetite,  and  they  had  a  little  feast  together,  talk¬ 
ing  meanwhile  of  Elzbieta  and  the  children  and  old  times. 
Shortly  before  they  were  through,  there  came  another 
colored  girl,  with  the  message  that  the  “  madame  ”  wanted 
Marija —  “  Lithuanian  Mary,’’  as  they  called  her  here. 

“  That  means  you  have  to  go,”  she  said  to  Jurgis. 

So  he  got  up,  and  she  gave  him  the  new  address  of  the 
family,  a  tenement  over  in  the  Ghetto  district.  “  You  go 
there,”  she  said.  “  They’ll  be  glad  to  see  you.” 

But  Jurgis  stood  hesitating. 

“I  —  I  don’t  like  to,”  he  said.  “ Honest,  Marija,  why 
don’t  you  just  give  me  a  little  money  and  let  me  look  for 
work  first  ?  ” 

“How  do  you  need  money?”  was  her  reply.  “All  you 
want  is  something  to  eat  and  a  place  to  sleep,  isn’t  it? ” 

“  Yes,”  he  said;  “but  then  I  don’t  like  to  go  there  after 
I  left  them  —  and  while  I  have  nothing  to  do,  and  while 
you  —  you  — ” 

“  Go  on  I  ”  said  Marija,  giving  him  a  push.  “  What  are 
you  talking  ?  —  I  won’t  give  you  money,”  she  added,  as  she 
lollowed  him  to  the  door,  “  because  you’ll  drink  it  up,  and 
do  yourself  harm.  Here’s  a  quarter  for  you  now,  and  go 
along,  and  they’ll  be  so  glad  to  have  you  back,  you  won’t 
have  time  to  feel  asiiamed.  Gnod-by  I  ” 

So  Jurgis  went  out,  and  walked  down  the  street  to  think 
it  over.  He  decided  tliat  he  would  first  try  to  get  work, 
and  so  he  put  in  the  rest  of  the  day  wandering  here  and 
there  among  factories  and  w'arehouses  without  success. 
Then,  when  it  was  nearly  dark,  he  concluded  to  go  home, 
and  set  out;  but  he  came  to  a  restaurant,  and  went  in  and 
spent  his  quarter  for  a  meal ;  and  when  he  came  out  he 
changed  his  mind  —  the  night  was  pleasant,  and  he  would 
sleep  somewhere  outside,  and  put  in  the  morrow  hunting, 
and  so  have  one  more  chance  of  a  job.  So  he  started  away 
again,  when  suddenly  he  chanced  to  look  about  him,  and 
found  that  he  was  walking  down  the  same  street  and  past 
the  same  hail  where  he  had  listened  to  the  political  speech 


356 


THE  JUNGLE 


the  night  before.  There  was  no  red  fire  and  no  band  now» 
but  there  was  a  sign  out,  announcing  a  meeting,  and  a 
stream  of  people  pouring  in  through  the  entrance.  In  a 
flash  Jurgis  had  decided  that  he  would  chance  it  once 
more,  and  sit  down  and  rest  while  making  up  his  mind 
what  to  do.  There  was  no  one  taking  tickets,  so  it  must 
be  a  free  show  again. 

He  entered.  There  were  no  decorations  in  the  hall  this 
time ;  but  there  was  quite  a  crowd  upon  the  platform,  and 
almost  every  seat  in  the  place  was  filled.  He  took  one  of 
the  last,  far  in  the  rear,  and  straightway  forgot  all  about 
his  surroundings.  W ould  Elzbieta  think  tha.t  he  had  come 
to  sponge  off  her,  or  would  she  understand  that  he  meant 
to  get  to  work  again  and  do  his  share?  Would  she  be 
decent  to  him,  or  would  she  scold  him?  If  only  he  could 
get  some  sort  of  a  job  before  he  went  —  if  that  last  boss 
had  only  been  willing  to  try  him  I 

—  Then  suddenly  Jurgis  looked  up.  A  tremendous  roar 
had  burst  from  the  throats  of  the  crowd,  which  by  this 
time  had  packed  the  hall  to  the  very  doors.  Men  and 
women  were  standing  up,  waving  handkerchiefs,  shouting, 
yelling.  Evidently  the  speaker  had  arrived,  thought 
Jurgis;  what  fools  they  were  making  of  themselves  I 
vVhat  were  they  expecting  to  get  out  of  it  anyhow  — 
wnat  uad  they  to  do  with  elections,  with  governing  the 
country?  Jurgis  had  been  behind  the  scenes  in  politics. 

He  went  back  to  his  thoughts,  but  with  one  further  fact 
to  reckon  with  —  that  he  was  caught  here.  The  ball  was 
now  filled  to  the  doors ;  and  after  the  meeting  it  would  be 
too  late  for  him  to  go  home,  so  he  would  have  to  make  the 
best  of  it  outside.  Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  go  home 
in  the  morning,  anyway,  for  the  children  would  be  at 
school,  and  he  and  Elzbieta  could  have  a  quiet  explanation. 
She  alv/ays  had  been  a  reasonable  person ;  and  he  really 
did  mean  to  do  right.  He  would  manage  to  persuade  her 
of  it  —  and  besides,  Marija  was  willing,  and  Marija  was 
furnishing  the  money.  If  Elzbieta  were  ugly,  he  would 
tell  her  that  in  so  many  words. 

So  Jurgis  went  on  meditating;  until  finally,  v/hen  he 


THE  JUNGLE 


357 


had  been  an  hour  or  two  in  the  hall,  there  began  to  pre- 
pare  itself  a  repetition  of  the  dismal  catastrophe  of  the 
night  before.  Speaking  had  been  going  on  all  the  time, 
and  the  audience  was  clapping  its  hands  and  shouting, 
thrilling  with  excitement;  and  little  by  little  the  sounds 
were  beginning  to  blur  in  Jurgis’s  ears,  and  his  thoughts 
were  beginning  to  run  together,  and  his  head  to  wobble 
and  nod.  He  caught  himself  many  times,  as  usual,  and 
made  desperate  resolutions ;  but  the  hall  was  hot  and  close, 
and  his  long  walk  and  his  dinner  were  too  much  for  him 
—  in  the  end  his  head  sank  forward  and  he  went  off  again. 

And  then  again  some  one  nudged  him,  and  he  sat  up 
with  his  old  terrified  start  I  He  had  been  snoring  again, 
of  course  I  And  now  what  ?  He  fixed  his  eyes  ahead  of 
him,  with  painful  intensity,  staring  at  the  platform  as  if 
nothing  else  ever  had  interested  him,  or  ever  could  inter¬ 
est  him,  all  his  life.  He  imagined  the  angry  exclamations, 
the  hostile  glances  ;  he  imagined  the  policeman  striding 
toward  him — reaching  for  his  neck. —  Or  was  he  to  have 
one  more  chance?  Were  they  going  to  let  him  alone  this 
time?  He  sat  trembling,  waiting  — 

And  then  suddenly  came  a  voice  in  his  ear,  a  woman's 
voice,  gentle  and  sweet,  “If  you  would  try  to  listen,  com¬ 
rade,  perhaps  you  would  be  interested.” 

Jurgis  was  more  startled  by  that  than  he  would  have 
been  by  the  touch  of  a  policeman.  He  still  kept  his  eyes 
fixed  ahead,  and  did  not  stir ;  but  his  heart  gave  a  great 
leap.  Comrade  1  Who  was  it  that  called  him  “comrade  ”  ? 

He  waited  long,  long;  and  at  last,  when  he  was  sure 
that  he  was  no  longer  watched,  he  stole  a  glance  out  of  the 
corner  of  his  eyes  at  the  woman  who  sat  beside  him.  She 
was  young  and  beautiful ;  she  wore  fine  clothes,  and  was 
what  is  called  a  “  lady.”  And  she  called  him  “  comrade  ”  ’ 

He  turned  a  little,  carefully,  so  that  he  could  see  hei 
better ;  then  he  began  to  watch  her,  fascinated.  She  had 
apparently  forgotten  all  about  him,  and  was  looking 
toward  the  platform.  A  man  was  speaking  there  —  Jurgis 
heal’d  his  voice  vaguely ;  but  all  his  thoughts  were  for  this 
woman’s  face.  A  feeling  of  alarm  stole  over  him  as  he 


358 


THE  JUNGLE 


stared  at  her.  It  made  his  flesh  creep.  What  ^¥as  the 
matter  with  her,  what  could  be  going  on,  to  affect  any  one 
like  that?  She  sat  as  one  turned  to  stone,  her  hands 
clenched  tightly  in  her  lap,  so  tightly  that  he  could  see  the 
cords  standing  out  in  her  wrists.  Thei-e  was  a  look  of 
excitement  upon  her  face,  of  tense  effort,  as  of  one  strug¬ 
gling  mightily,  or  witnessing  a  struggle.  There  was  a 
faint  quivering  of  her  nostrils ;  and  now  and  then  she 
would  moisten  her  lips  with  feverish  haste.  Her  bosom 
rose  and  fell  as  she  breathed,  and  her  excitement  seemed 
to  mount  higher  and  higher,  and  then  to  sink  away  again, 
like  a  boat  tossing  upon  ocean  surges.  What  was  it? 
What  was  the  matter?  It  must  be  something  that  the 
man  was  saying,  up  there  on  the  platform.  What  sort  of 
a  man  was  he  ?  And  what  sort  of  a  thing  was  this,  any¬ 
how  ?  —  So  all  at  once  it  occurred  to  J  urgis  to  look  at 
the  speaker. 

It  was  like  coming  suddenly  upon  some  wild  sight  of 
nature,  —  a  mountain  forest  lashed  by  a  tempest,  a  ship 
tossed  about  upon  a  stormy  sea.  Jurgis  had  an  unpleasant 
sensation,  a  sense  of  confusion,  of  disorder,  of  wild  and 
meaningless  uproar.  The  man  was  tall  and  gaunt,  as 
haggard  as  his  auditor  himself ;  a  thin  black  beard  cov¬ 
ered  half  of  his  face,  and  one  could  see  only  two  black 
hollows  where  the  eyes  were.  He  was  speaking  rapidly, 
in  great  excitement;  he  used  many  gestures  —  as  bespoke 
he  moved  here  and  there  upon  the  stage,  reaching  with 
his  long  arms  as  if  to  seize  each  person  in  his  audience. 
His  voice  was  deep,  like  an  organ ;  it  was  some  time,  how¬ 
ever,  before  Jurgis  thought  of  the  voice  —  he  was  too 
much  occupied  with  his  eyes  to  think  of  what  the  man  was 
saying.  But  suddenly  it  seemed  as  if  the  speaker  had  begun 
pointing  straight  at  him,  as  if  he  had  singled  him  out  par¬ 
ticularly  for  his  remarks  ;  and  so  Jurgis  became  suddenly 
aware  of  the  voice,  trembling,  vibrant  with  emotion,  with 
pain  and  longing,  with  a  burden  of  things  unutterable,  not 
to  be  compassed  by  words.  To  hear  it  was  to  be  suddenly 
arrested,  to  be  gripped,  transfixed. 

“  You  listen  to  these  things,”  the  man  was  saying,  “  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


359 


you  say,  *  Yes,  they  are  true,  but  they  have  been  that  way 
always.’  Or  you  say,  ‘  Maybe  it  will  come,  but  not  in 
my  time — it  will  not  help  me.’  And  so  you  return  to 
your  daily  round  of  toil,  you  go  back  to  be  ground  up  for 
profits  in  the  world-wide  mill  of  economic  might  I  To  toil 
long  hours  for  another’s  advantage ;  to  live  in  mean  and 
squalid  homes,  to  work  in  dangerous  and  unhealthful 
places ;  to  wrestle  with  the  spectres  of  hunger  and  priva¬ 
tion,  to  take  your  chances  of  accident,  disease,  and  death. 
And  each  day  the  struggle  becomes  fiercer,  the  pace  more 
cruel ;  each  day  you  have  to  toil  a  little  harder,  and  feel 
the  iron  hand  of  circumstance  close  upon  you  a  little 
tighter.  Months  pass,  years  maybe — and  then  you  come 
again ;  and  again  1  am  here  to  plead  with  you,  to  know  if 
want  and  misery  have  yet  done  their  work  with  you,  if  in¬ 
justice  and  oppression  have  yet  opened  your  eyes  I  I  shall 
still  be  waiting  —  there  is  nothing  else  that  I  can  do. 
There  is  no  wilderness  where  I  can  hide  from  these  things, 
there  is  no  haven  where  1  can  escape  them ;  though  I 
travel  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  I  find  the  same  accursed 
system,  —  I  find  that  all  the  fair  and  noble  impulses  of 
humanity,  the  dreams  of  poets  and  the  agonies  of  tnartyrs, 
are  shackled  and  bound  in  the  service  of  organized  and 
predatory  Greed  I  And  therefore  I  cannot  rest,  I  cannot 
be  silent;  therefore  I  cast  aside  comfort  and  happiness, 
health  and  good  repute  —  and  go  out  into  the  w^oiid  and 
cry  out  the  pain  of  my  spirit!  Therefore  I  am  not  to  be 
silenced  by  poverty  and  sickness,  not  by  hatred  and  oblo¬ 
quy,  by  threats  and  ridicule  —  not  by  prison  and  perse¬ 
cution,  if  they  should  come  —  not  by  any  power  that  is 
upon  the  earth  or  above  the  earth,  that  was,  or  is,  or  ever 
can  be  created.  If  I  fail  to-night,  I  can  only  try  to-morrow  ; 
knowing  that  the  fault  must  be  mine  —  that  if  once  the 
vision  of  my  soul  were  spoken  upon  earth,  if  once  the 
anguish  of  its  defeat  were  uttered  in  human  speech,  it 
would  break  the  stoutest  barriers  of  prejudice,  it  would 
shake  the  most  sluggish  soul  to  action !  It  would  abash 
the  most  cynical,  it  would  terrify  the  most  selfish  ;  and  the 
voice  of  mockery  would  be  silenced,  and  fraud  and  false- 


360 


THE  JUNGLE 


hood  would  slink  back  into  their  dens,  and  the  truth  would 
stand  forth  alone !  For  I  speak  with  the  voice  of  the 
millions  who  are  voiceless  I  Of  them  that  are  oppressed 
and  have  no  comforter !  Of  the  disinherited  of  life,  for 
whom  there  is  no  respite  and  no  deliverance,  to  whom  the 
world  is  a  prison,  a  dungeon  of  torture,  a  tomb!  With 
the  voice  of  the  little  child  who  toils  to-night  in  a  South¬ 
ern  cotton-mill,  staggering  with  exhaustion,  numb  with 
agony,  and  knowing  no  hope  buc  the  grave  I  Of  the 
mother  who  sews  by  candle-light  in  her  tenement-garret, 
weary  and  weeping,  smitten  with  the  mortal  hunger  of  hel 
babes !  Of  the  man  who  lies  upon  a  bed  of  rags,  wrestling 
in  his  last  sickness  and  leaving  his  loved  ones  to  perish  t 
Of  the  young  girl  who,  somewhere  at  this  moment,  is  walk¬ 
ing  the  streets  of  this  horrible  city,  beaten  and  starving, 
and  making  her  choice  between  the  brothel  and  the  lake! 
With  the  voice  of  tliose,  whoever  and  wherever  they  may 
be,  who  are  caught  beneath  the  wheels  of  the  jiTggernaut 
of  Greed  I  With  the  voice  of  humanity,  calling  for  deliv- 
®.rance !  Of  the  everlasting  soul  of  Man,  arising  from  tho 
dust;  breaking  its  way  out  of  its  prison  —  rending  the 
bands  of  oppression  and  ignorance — groping  its  way  to 
the  light ! 

The  speaker  paused.  There  was  an  instant  of  silence, 
while  men  caught  their  breaths,  and  then  like  a  single 
sound  there  came  a  cry  from  a  thousand  people.  —  Through 
it  ail  Jurgis  sat  still,  motionless  and  rigid,  his  eyes  fixed 
upon  the  speaker  ;  he  was  trembling,  smitten  with  wonder. 

Suddenly  the  man  raised  his  hands,  and  silence  fell,  and 
he  began  again. 

“  I  plead  with  you,”  he  said,  “  whoever  you  may  be,  pro¬ 
vided  that  you  care  about  the  truth  ;  but  most  of  all  I  plead 
with  working-men,  with  those  to  whom  the  evils  I  portray 
are  not  mere  matters  of  sentiment,  to  be  dallied  and  toyed 
with,  and  then  perhaps  put  aside  and  forgotten  —  to  whom 
they  are  the  grim  and  relentless  realities  of  the  daily  grind, 
the  chains  upon  their  limbs,  the  lash  upon  their  backs,  the 
iron  in  their  souls.  To  you,  working-men  i  To  you,  the 
toilers,  who  have  made  this  land,  and  have  no  voice  in  its 


THE  JUNGLE 


361 


councils!  To  you,  whose  lot  it  is  to  sow  that  others  may 
reap,  to  labor  and  obey,  and  ask  no  more  than  the  wages  of 
a  beast  of  burden,  the  food  and  shelter  to  keep  you  alive 
from  day  to  day.  It  is  to  you.  that  I  come  with  my  mes¬ 
sage  of  salvation,  it  is  to  you  that  I  appeal.  I  know  how 
much  it  is  to  ask  of  you  —  I  know,  for  I  have  been  in  your 
place,  1  have  lived  your  life,  and  there  is  no  man  before  me 
here  to-night  who  knows  it  better.  I  have  known  what  it 
is  to  be  a  street-waif,  a  boot-black,  living  upon  a  crust  of 
bread  and  sleeping  in  cellar  stairways  and  under  empty 
wagons.  I  have  known  what  it  is  to  dare  and  to  aspire,  to 
dream  mighty  dreams  and  to  see  them  perish  — to  see  all 
the  fair  flowers  of  my  spirit  trampled  into  the  mire  by  the 
wild  beast  powers  of  life.  I  know  what  is  the  price  that  a 
working-man  pays  for  knowledge  —  I  have  paid  for  it  with 
food  and  sleep,  with  agony  of  body  and  mind,  with  health, 
almost  with  life  itself ;  and  so,  when  I  come  to  you  with  a 
story  of  hope  and  freedom,  with  the  vision  of  a  new  earth 
to  be  created,  of  a  new  labor  to  be  dared,  I  am  not  sur¬ 
prised  that  I  And  3^00  sordid  and  material,  sluggish  and  in¬ 
credulous.  That  I  do  not  despair  is  because  I  know  also 
the  forces  that  are  driving  behind  you  —  because  I  know 
the  raging  lash  of  poverty,  the  sting  of  contempt  and  mas¬ 
tership,  ‘the  insolence  of  office  and  the  spurns.’  Because 
I  feel  sure  that  in  the  crowd  that  has  come  to  me  to-night, 
no  matter  how  many  may  be  dull  and  heedless,  no  matter 
how  many  may  have  come  out  of  idle  curiosity,  or  in  order 
to  ridicule — there  will  be  some  one  man  whom  pain  and 
suffering  have  made  desperate,  whom  some  chance  vision 
of  wrong  and  horror  has  startled  and  shocked  into  atten¬ 
tion.  And  to  him  my  words  will  come  like  a  sudden  flash 
of  lightning  to  one  who  travels  in  darkness  —  revealing  the 
wa}"  before  him,  the  perils  and  the  obstacles  —  solving  all 
problems,  making  all  difficulties  clear !  The  scales  will  fall 
from  his  eyes,  the  shackles  will  be  torn  from  his  limbs  —  he 
will  leap  up  with  a  cry  of  thankfulness,  he  will  stride  forth  a 
free  man  at  lastl  A  man  delivered  from  his  self-created 
slavery!  A  man  who  will  never  more  be  trapped — whom 
no  blandishments  will  cajole,  whom  no  threats  will  frighten, • 
24 


362 


THE  JUNGLE 


who  from  to-night  on  will  move  forward,  and  not  backward, 
who  will  study  and  understand,  who  will  gird  on  his  sword 
and  take  his  place  in  the  army  of  his  comrades  and  brothers. 
Who  will  carry  the  good  tidings  to  others,  as  I  have  carried 
them  to  him  —  the  priceless  gift  of  liberty  and  light  that 
is  neither  mine  nor  his,  but  is  the  heritage  of  the  soul  of 
man  1  W orking-men,  working-men  — -  comrades !  open  your 
eyes  and  look  about  you  I  You  have  lived  so  long  in  the 
toil  and  heat  that  your  senses  are  dulled,  your  souls 
are  numbed;  but  realize  once  in  your  lives  this  world  in 
which  you  dwell  —  tear  off  the  rags  of  its  customs  and 
conventions  — behold  it  as  it  is,  in  all  its  hideous  nakedness! 
Realize  it,  realize  it!  Realize  that  out  upon  the  plains  ol 
Manchuria  to-night  two  hostile  armies  are  facing  each  othei 
—  that  now,  while  we  are  seated  here,  a  million  humai< 
beings  may  be  hurled  at  each  other’s  throats,  striving  wiHj 
the  fury  of  maniacs  to  tear  each  other  to  pieces !  And  tins 
in  the  twentieth  century,  nineteen  hundred  years  simse 
the  Prince  of  Peace  was  born  on  earth  I  Nineteen  hun¬ 
dred  years  that  his  words  have  been  preached  as  divine,  and 
here  two  armies  of  men  are  rending  and  tearing  each  other 
like  the  wild  beasts  of  the  forest!  Philosophers  have 
reasoned,  prophets  have  denounced,  poets  have  wept  and 
pleaded  —  and  still  this  hideous  Monster  roams  at  large ! 
We  have  schools  and  colleges, newspapers  and  books;  we 
have  searched  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  w'e  have  weighed 
and  probed  and  reasoned — and  all  to  equip  men  to  destroy 
each  other!  We  call  it  War,  and  pass  it  by  —  but  do  not 
put  me  off  with  platitudes  and  conventions  —  come  with 
me,  come  with  me  —  realize  it!  See  the  bodies  of  men 
pierced  by  bullets,  blown  into  pieces  by  bursting  shells  I 
Hear  the  crunching  of  the  bayonet,  plunged  into  human 
flesh ;  hear  the  groans  and  shrieks  of  agony,  see  the  faces 
of  men  crazed  by  pain,  turned  into  fiends  by  fury  and 
hate  !  Put  your  hand  upon  that  piece  of  flesh  —  it  is  hot 
and  quivering  —  just  now  it  was  a  part  of  a  man. !  This 
blood  is  still  steaming  —  it  was  driven  by  a  human  heart  I 
Almighty  God !  and  this  goes  on  —  it  is  systematic,  organ¬ 
ized,  premeditated  I  And  we  know  it,  and  re&d  of  it,  and 


THE  JUNGLE 


363 


take  it  for  granted ;  our  papers  tell  of  it,  and  the  presses 
are  not  stopped  —  our  churches  know  of  it,  and  do  not  close 
their  doors  —  the  people  behold  it,  and  do  not  rise  up  in 
horror  and  revolution  I 

“  Or  perhaps  Manchuria  is  too  far  away  for  you  —  come 
home  with  me  then,  come  here  to  Chicago.  Here  in  this 
city  to-night  ten  thousand  women  are  shut  up  in  foul  pens, 
and  driven  by  hunger  to  sell  their  bodies  to  live.  And 
we  know  it,  we  make  it  a  jest  I  And  these  women  are 
made  in  the  image  of  your  mothers,  they  may  be  your 
sisters,  your  daughters;  the  child  whom  you  left  at  home 
to-night,  whose  laughing  eyes  will  greet  you  in  the  morn¬ 
ing —  that  fate  may  be  waiting  for  her  I  To  night  in 
Chicago  there  are  ten  thousand  men,  homeless  and 
wretched,  willing  to  work  and  begging  for  a  chance,  yet 
starving,  and  fronting  in  terror  the  awful  winter  coldl 
To-night  in  Chicago  there  are  a  hundred  thousand  children 
wearing  out  their  strength  and  blasting  their  lives  in  the 
effort  to  earn  their  bread  I  There  are  a  hundred  thousand 
mothers  who  are  living  in  misery  and  squalor,  struggling 
to  earn  enough  to  feed  their  little  ones  I  There  are  a 
hundred  thousand  old  people,  cast  off  and  helpless,  waiting 
for  death  to  take  them  from  their  torments !  There  are  a 
million  people,  men  and  women  and  children,  who  share 
the  curse  of  the  wage-slave ;  who  toil  every  hour  they  can 
stand  and  see,  for  just  enough  to  keep  them  alive  ;  who  are 
condemned  till  the  end  of  their  days  to  monotony  and 
weariness,  to  hunger  and  misery,  to  heat  and  cold,  to  dirt 
and  disease,  to  ignorance  and  drunkenness  and  vice  !  And 
then  turn  over  the  page  with  me,  and  gaze  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  picture.  There  are  a  thousand — ten  thousand, 
maybe  —  who  are  the  masters  of  these  Taves,  who  own 
their  toil.  They  do  nothing  to  earn  what  they  receive, 
they  do  not  even  have  to  ask  for  it  —  it  comes  to  them  of 
itself,  their  only  care  is  to  dispose  of  it.  They  live  in 
palaces,  they  riot  in  luxury  and  extravagance  —  such  as  no 
words  can  describe,  as  makes  the  imagination  reel  and 
stagger,  makes  the  soul  grow  sick  and  faint.  Thej'’  spend 
hundreds  of  dollars  for  a  pair  of  shoes,  a  handkerchief,  a 


364 


THE  JUI^GIiE 


garter;  they  spend  millions  for  horses  and  antomobiles  and 
yachts,  for  palaces  and  banquets,  for  little  shiny  stones 
with  which  to  deck  their  bodies.  Their  life  is  a  contest 
among  themselves  for  supremacy  in  ostentation  and  reck¬ 
lessness,  in  tlie  destroying  of  useful  and  necessary  things, 
in  the  wasting  of  the  labor  and  the  lives  of  their  fellow- 
creatures,  the  toil  and  anguish  of  the  nations,  the  sweat 
and  tears  and  blood  of  the  human  race  I  It  is  all  theirs  — 
it  comes  to  them ;  just  as  all  the  springs  pouj’  into  stream' 
lets,  and  the  streamlets  into  rivers,  and  the  rivers  into  the 
ocean  —  so,  automatically  and  inevitably,  all  the  wealth 
of  society  comes  to  them.  The  farmer  tills  the  soil, 
the  miner  digs  in  the  earth,  the  weaver  tends  the  loom, 
the  mason  carves  the  stone ;  the  clever  man  invents,  the 
shrewd  man  directs,  the  wise  man  studies,  the  inspired  man 
sings — and  all  the  result,  the  products  of  the  labor  of  brain 
and  muscle,  are  gathered  into  one  stupendous  stream  and 
poured  into  their  laps  I  The  whole  of  society  is  in  their 
grip,  the  whole  labor  of  the  world  lies  at  their  mercy  — 
and  like  fierce  wolves  they  rend  and  destroy,  like  ravening 
vultures  they  devour  and  tear  I  The  whole  power  of  maii- 
kind  belongs  to  them,  forever  and  beyond  recall — do  what 
it  can,  strive  as  it  will,  humanity  lives  for  them  and  dies 
for  them  I  They  own  not  merely  the  labor  of  society,  they 
have  bought  the  governments ;  and  everywhere  they  use 
their  raped  and  stolen  power  to  intrench  themselves  in 
their  privileges,  to  dig  wider  and  deeper  the  channels 
through  which  the  river  of  profits  flows  to  them  I  —  And 
you,  working-men,  working-men  1  You  have  been  brought 
up  to  it,  you  plod  on  like  beasts  of  burden,  thinking  only 
of  the  day  and  its  pain  —  yet  is  there  a  man  among  you 
who  can  believe  that  such  a  system  will  continue  forever 
— is  there  a  man  here  in  this  audience  to-night  so  hardened 
and  debased  that  he  dare  rise  up  before  me  and  say  that  he 
believes  it  can  continue  forever  ;  that  the  product  of  the 
labor  of  society,  the  means  of  existence  of  the  human  race, 
will  always  belong  to  idlers  and  parasites,  to  be  spent  for 
the  gratification  of  vanity  and  lust  —  to  be  spent  for  any 
purpose  whatever,  to  be  at  the  disposal  of  any  individual 


THE  JUNGLE 


365 


will  whatever  —  that  somehow,  somewhen,  the  labor  of 
humanity  will  not  belong  to  humanity,  to  be  used  for  the 
purposes  of  humanity,  to  be  controlled  by  the  will  of 
humanity?  And  if  this  is  ever  to  be,  how  is  it  to  be  — 
what  power  is  there  that  will  bring  it  about?  Will  it  be 
the  task  of  your  masters,  do  you  think  —  will  they  write 
the  charter  of  your  liberties?  Will  they  forge  you  the 
sword  of  your  deliverance,  will  they  marshal  you  the  army 
and  lead  it  to  the  fray?  Will  their  wealth  be  spent  for 
the  purpose  —  will  they  build  colleges  and  churches  to 
teach  you,  will  they  print  papers  to  herald  your  progress, 
and  organize  political  parties  to  guide  and  carry  on  the 
struggle?  Can  you  not  see  that  the  task  is  your  task — - 
yours  to  dream,  yours  to  resolve,  yours  to  execute  ?  That 
if  ever  it  is  carried  out,  it  will  be  in  the  face  of  every  ob¬ 
stacle  that  wealth  and  mastership  can  oppose  —  in  the  face 
of  ridicule  and  slander,  of  hatred  and  persecution,  of  the 
bludgeon  and  the  jail?  That  it  will  be  by  the  power  of 
your  naked  bosoms,  opposed  to  the  rage  of  oppression  1 
By  the  grim  and  bitter  teaching  of  blind  and  merciless 
affliction  !  By  the  painful  gropings  of  the  untutored  mind, 
by  the  feeble  stammerings  of  the  uncultured  voice  !  By 
the  sad  and  lonely  hunger  of  the  spirit ;  by  seeking  and 
striving  and  yearning,  by  heartache  and  despairing,  by 
agony  and  sweat  of  blood  I  It  will  be  by  money  paid  for 
Avith  hunger,  by  knowledge  stolen  from  sleep,  by  thoughts 
communicated  under  the  shadow  of  the  gallows !  It  will 
be  a  movement  beginning  in  the  far-off  past,  a  thing  ob¬ 
scure  and  unlionored,  a  thing  easy  to  ridicule,  easy  to  de¬ 
spise  ;  a  thing  unlovely,  wearing  the  aspect  of  vengeance 
and  hate  —  but  to  you,  the  working-man,  the  wage-slave, 
calling  with  a  voice  insistent,  imperious — with  a  voice 
that  you  cannot  escape,  wherever  upon  the  earth  you  may 
be  !  With  the  voice  of  all  your  wrongs,  with  the  voice  of 
all  your  desires  ;  with  the  voice  of  your  duty  and  your 
hope  —  of  everything  in  the  world  that  is  worth  while  to 
you  I  The  voice  of  the  poor,  demanding  that  poverty  shall 
cease  I  The  voice  of  the  oppressed,  pronouncing  the  doom 
of  oppression  I  The  voice  of  power,  wrought  out  of  suffer- 


366 


THE  JUNGLE 


ing — of  resolution,  crushed  out  of  weakness  —  of  joy  and 
courage,  born  in  the  bottomless  pit  of  anguish  and  despair ! 
The  voice  of  Labor,  desjjised  and  outraged ;  a  mighty 
giant,  lying  prostrate  —  mountainous,  colossal,  but  blinded, 
bound,  and  ignorant  of  his  strength.  And  now  a  di-eam 
of  resistance  haunts  him,  hope  battling  with  fear;  until 
suddenly  he  stirs,  and  a  fetter  snaps  —  and  a  thrill  shoots 
through  him,  to  the  farthest  ends  of  his  huge  body,  and  in 
a  flash  the  dream  becomes  an  act  I  He  starts,  he  lifts  him¬ 
self  ;  and  the  bands  are  shattered,  the  burdens  roll  off  him ; 
he  rises  — •  towering,  gigantic ;  he  springs  to  his  feet,  he 
shouts  in  his  new-born  exultation  —  ” 

And  the  speaker’s  voice  broke  suddenly,  with  the  stress 
of  his  feelings  ;  he  stood  with  his  arms  stretched  out  above 
him,  and  the  power  of  his  vision  seemed  to  lift  him  from 
the  floor.  The  audience  came  to  its  feet  with  a  yell  ■;  men 
waved  their  arms,  laughing  aloud  in  their  excitement. 
And  .Jurgis  was  with  them,  he  was  shouting  to  tear  his 
throat ;  shouting  because  he  could  not  help  it,  because  the 
stress  of  his  feeling  was  more  than  he  could  bear.  It  was 
not  merely  the  man’s  words,  the  torrent  of  his  eloquence. 
It  was  his  presence,  it  was  his  voice :  a  voice  with  strange 
intonations  that  rang  through  the  chambers  of  the  soul  like 
the  clanging  of  a  bell  —  that  gripped  the  listener  like  a 
mighty  hand  about  his  body,  that  shook  him  and  startled 
him  with  sudden  fright,  with  a  sense  of  things  not  of  earth, 
of  mysteries  never  spoken  before,  of  presences  of  awe  and 
terror !  There  was  an  unfolding  of  vistas  before  him,  a 
breaking  of  the  ground  beneath  him,  an  upheaving,  a  stir¬ 
ring,  a  trembling ;  he  felt  himself  suddenly  a  mere  man  no 
longer — there  were  powers  within  him  undreamed  of,  there 
were  demon  forces  contending,  age-long  wonders  struggling 
to  be  born;  and  he  sat  oppressed  with  pain  and  joy,  while  a 
.  tingling  stole  down  into  his  finger-tips,  and  his  breath  came 
'  hard  and  fast.  The  sentences  of  this  man  were  to  Jurgis  like 
the  crashing  of  thunder  in  his  soul ;  a  flood  of  emotion  surged 
'  up  in  him — -all  his  old  hopes  and  longings,  his  old  griefs 
and  rages  and  despairs.  All  that  he  had  ever  felt  in  his 
whole  life  seemed  to  come  back  to  him  at  once,  and  with 


THE  JUNGLE 


367 


one  new  emotion,  hardly  to  be  described.  That  he  should 
have  suffered  such  oppressions  and  such  horrors  was  bad 
enough ;  but  that  he  should  have  been  crushed  and  beaten 
by  them,  that  he  should  have  submitted,  and  forgotten^ 
and  lived  in  peace  —  ah,  truly  that  was  a  thing  not  to  be' 
put  into  words,  a  thing  not  to  be  borne  by  a  human  crea¬ 
ture,  a  thing  of  terror  and  madness  1  “  What,”  asks  the 

prophet,  “is  the  murder  of  them  that  kill  the  body,  to  the 
murder  of  them  that  kill  the  soul?”  And  Jurgis  was  a 
man  whose  soul  had  been  murdered,  who  had  ceased  to 
hope  and  to  struggle  —  who  had  made  terms  with  degra¬ 
dation  and  despair ;  and  now,  suddenly,  in  one  awful  con¬ 
vulsion,  the  black  and  hideous  fact  was  made  plain  to  him  I 
There  was  a  falling  in  of  all  the  pillars  of  his  soul,  the  sky 
seemed  to  split  above  him  - —  he  stood  there,  with  his 
clenched  hands  upraised,  his  eyes  bloodshot,  and  the  veins 
standing  out  purple  in  his  face,  roaring  in  the  voice  of  a 
wild  beast,  frantic,  incoherent,  maniacal.  And  when  he 
could 
whisp 
God  I 


shout  no  more  he  still  stood  there,  gasping,  and 
ering  hoarsely  to  himself;  “By  Godl  By  Godl  By 


ohaptbe  xxix 


Th®  man  had  gone  back  to  a  seat  upon  the  platforna, 
and  Jurgis  realized  that  his  speech  was  overo  The  applause 
continued  for  several  minutes  •,  and  then  some  one  started 
a  song,  and  the  crowd  took  it  up,,  and  the  place  shook  with 
it.  Jurgis  had  never  heard  it,  and  he  could  not  make  out 
the  words,  but  the  wild  and  wonderful  spirit  of  it  seized 
upon  him  —  it  was  the  Marseillaise  I  As  stanza  after 
stanza  of  it  thundered  forth,  he  sat  with  his  hands  clasped, 
trembling  in  every  nerve.  Be  had  never  been  so  stirred 
in  his  life  —  it  was  a  miracle  that  had  been  wrought  in 
him.  He  could  not  think  at  all,  he  was  stunned 5  yet  he 
knew  that  in  the  mighty  upheaval  that  had  taken  place  in 
his  soul,  a  new  man  had  been  born.  He  bad  been  torn  out 
of  the  jaws  of  destruction,  he  had  been  delivered  from  the 
thraldom  of  despair ;  the  whole  world  had  been  changed 
for  him  —  he  was  free,  he  was  free!  Even  if  he  were  to 
suffer  as  he  had  before,  even  if  he  were  to  beg  and  starve, 
nothing  would  be  the  same  to  him ;  he  would  understand 
it,  and  bciar  it.  He  would  no  longer  be  the  sport  of  circum¬ 
stances,  he  would  be  a  man,  with  a  will  and  a  purpose ;  be 
would  have  something  to  fight  for,  something  to  die  for,  if 
need  be !  Here  were  men  who  would  show  him  and  help 
him ;  and  he  would  have  friends  and  allies,  he  would  dwell 
in  the  sight  of  justice,  and  walk  arm  in  arm  with  power. 

The  audience  subsided  again,  and  Jurgis  sat  back.  The 
chairman  of  the  meeting  came  forward  and  began  to  speak 
His  voice  sounded  thin  and  futile  after  the  other's,  and  to 
Jurgis  it  seemed  a  profanation.  Why  should  any  one  else 
speak,  after  that  miraculous  man  —  why  should  thej  not 
all  sit  in  silence  if  The  chairman  was  explaining  v 

368 


THE  JUNGLE 


369 


collection  would  now  be  taken  up  to  defray  the  ex])enses 
ot  the  meetiiig,  and  for  tlie  benefit  of  the  campaign  fund  of 
the  party.  J  urgis  heard  ;  but  he  had  not  a  penny  to  give, 
and  so  his  tlioughts  went  elsewhere  again. 

He  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  orator,  who  sat  in  an  arm* 
chair,  his  head  leaning  on  his  hand  and  his  attitude  indi 
eating  exhaustion.  But  suddenly  he  stood  up  again,  and 
Jurgis  heard  the  chairman  of  the  meeting  saying  that  the 
speaker  would  now  answer  any  questions  which  the  audi¬ 
ence  might  care  to  put  to  him.  The  man  came  foi  ward, 
and  some  one  —  a  woman  —  arose  and  asked  about  some 
apinion  the  speaker  had  expressed  eoncerning  Tolstoi. 
Jurgis  had  never  heard  of  Tolstoi,  and  did  not  care  any¬ 
thing  about  him.  Why  should  any  one  want  to  ask  such 
questions,  after  an  address  like  that?  The  thing  was  not 
to  calk,  but  to  do ;  the  thing  was  to  get  nold  of  others  and 
rouse  them,  to  organize  them  and  prepare  tor  the  fight  I 

But  still  the  discussion  went  on,  in  ordinary  conversa¬ 
tional  tones,  and  it  brought  Jurgis  back  to  tfie  everyday 
world.  A  few  minutes  ago  he  had  felo  like  seizing  the  hand 
of  the  beautiful  lady  by  his  side,  and  Kissing  it;  he  had 
felt  like  fimging  liis  arms  about  the  neck  of  the  man  on 
the  other  side  of  him.  And  now  he  began  to  realize  again 
that  he  was  a  “hobo,”  —  that  he  was  ragged  and  dirty, and 
smelt  bad,  and  had  no  place  to  sleep  that  night! 

And  so,  at  last,  when  the  meeting  broke  up,  and  the 
audience  started  to  leave,  poor  Jurgis  was  in  an  agony  of 
uncertainty,  ffe  had  not  thought  of  leaving  —  he  had 
thougut  that  the  vision  must  last  forever,  that  he  had 
found  comrades  and  brothers.  But  now  be  wmuld  go  out, 
and  the  thing  \rould  fade  away,  and  he  would  never  be 
able  to  find  it  again  I  He  sat  in  his  seat,  frightened  and 
wondering;  but  others  in  the  same  row  wanted  to  get  out, 
and  so  he  had  to  stand  up  and  move  along.  As  he  was 
swept  down  the  aisle  he  looked  from  one  pei'sou  to 
another,  wistfully;  they  were  all  excitedly  discussing  the 
address  —  but  there  was  nobody  wfio  offered  to  discuss  it 
With  him.  He  was  near  enough  to  the  door  to  feel  the 
night  aii\  when  desperation  seized  him  He  knew  nothing 


^70 


THE  JUNGLE 


at  all  about  that  speech  he  had  heard,  not  even  the-  name 
of  the  orator ;  anjd  he  was  to  go  away  —  no,  no,  it  was 
preposterous,  he  must  speak  to  some  one;  he  must  find 
that  man  himself  and  tell  himo  He  would  not  despise 
him,  tramp  as  he  was  I 

So  he  stepped  into  an  empty  row  of  seats  and  watched, 
and  when  the  crowd  had  thinned  out,  he  started  toward 
the  platform.  The  speaker  was  gone ;  but  there  was  a 
stage-door  that  stood  open,  with  people  passing  in  and 
out,  and  no  one  on  guard.  Jurgis  summoned  up  his  cour¬ 
age  and  went  in,  and  down  a  hallway,  and  to  the  door  of 
a  room  where  many  people  were  crowded  No  one  paid 
any  attention  to  him,  and  he  pushed  in,  and  in  a  corner 
he  saw  the  man  he  sought.  The  orator  sat  in  a  chair, 
with  his  shoulders  sunk  together  and  his  eyes  half  closed ; 
his  face  was  ghastly  pale,  almost  greenish  in  hue,  and  one 
arm  lay  limp  at  his  side.  A  big  man  with  spectacles  on 
stood  near  him,  and  kept  pushing  back  the  crowd,  saying, 

Stand  away  a  little,  please ;  can’t  you  see  the  comrade 
is  worn  out  ?  ” 

So  Jurgis  stood  watching,  while  five  or  ten  minutes 
passed.  Now  and  then  the  man  would  look  up,  and  ad¬ 
dress  a  word  or  two  to  those  who  were  near  him  ;  and,  at 
last,  on  one  of  these  occasions,  his  glance  rested  on  Jurgis. 
There  seemed  to  be  a  slight  hint  of  inquiry  about  it,  and 
a  sudden  impulse  seized  the  other.  He  stepped  forward. 

“1  wanted  to  thank  you,  sir  l”  he  began,  in  breathless 
haste.  “I  could  not  go  away  without  telling  you  how 
much  —  how  glad  1  am  1  heard  you.  1  —  1  didn’t  know 
any  thing  about  it  all  — 

The  big  man  with  the  spectacles,  who  had  moved  away, 
came  back  at  this  moment.  “The  comrade  is  too  tired 
to  talk  to  any  one  —  ”  he  began ;  but  the  other  held  up 
his  hand. 

“Wait,'*  he  said.  “He  has  something  to  say  to  me.’^ 
And  then  he  looked  into  Jurgis’s  face.  “  You  want  to 
Know  more  about  Socialism?'’  he  asked. 

Jurgis  started.  “I  —  I  —  ”  he  stammered.  “Is  it 

Socialism  ?  I  didn’t  know.  I  want  to  know  about  what 


THE  JUNGLE 


371 


you  spoke  of  —  I  want  to  help.  I  have  bee  i  through  all 
that.’’ 

“Where  do  you  live?”  asked  the  other. 

“I  have  no  home,”  said  Jurgis,  “I  am  out  of  work.” 

“  You  are  a  foreigner,  are  you  not?  ” 

“  Lithuanian,  sir.” 

The  man  thought  for  a  moment,  and  then  turned  to  his 
friend.  “Who  is  there,  Walters?”  he  asked.  “There 
's  Ostrinski  —  but  he  is  a  Pole  —  ” 

“  Ostrinski  speaks  Lithuanian,”  said  the  other. 

“  All  right,  then  ;  would  you  mind  seeing  if  he  has  gone 
yet  ?  ” 

The  other  started  away,  and  the  speaker  looked  at  Jur¬ 
gis  again.  He  had  deep,  black  eyes,  and  a  face  full  of 
gentleness  and  pain.  “  You  must  excuse  me,  comrade,” 
he  said.  “  I  am  just  tired  out  —  I  have  spoken  every 
day  for  the  last  month.  I  will  introduce  you  to  some  one 
who  will  be  able  to  help  you  as  well  as  I  could  —  ” 

The  messenger  had  had  to  go  no  further  than  the  door; 
he  came  back,  followed  by  a  man  whom  he  introduced  to 
Jurgis  as  “Comrade  Ostrinski.”  Comrade  Ostrinski  was 
ti  little  man,  scarcely  up  to  Jurgis’s  shoulder,  wizened  and 
wrinkled,  very  ugly,  and  slightly  lame.  He  had  on  a 
long-tailed  black  coat,  worn  green  at  the  seams  and  the 
Outtonholes ;  his  eyes  must  have  been  weak,  for  he  wore 
green  spectacles,  that  gave  him  a  grotesque  appearance. 
But  his  hand  clasp  was  bearty,  and  he  spoke  in  Lithuanian, 
which  warmed  Jurgis  to  him. 

“You  want  to  know  about  Socialism?”  he  said. 
“Surely.  Let  us  go  out  raid  take  a  stroll,  where  we  can 
be  quiet  and  talk  some.” 

And  so  Jurgis  bade  farewell  to  the  master  wizard,  and 
went  out.  Ostrinski  asked  where  he  lived,  offering  to 
walk  in  that  direction ;  and  so  he  had  to  explain  once 
more  that  he  was  without  a  home.  At  the  other’s  request 
he  told  his  story ;  how  he  had  come  to  America,  and  what 
had  happened  to  him  in  the  stockyards,  and  how  his  family 
had  been  broken  up,  and  how  he  had  become  a  wanderer. 
So  much  the  little  man  heard,  and  then  he  pressed  Jurgis’s 


372 


THE  JUNGLE 


arm  tightly.  “You  have  been  through  the  mill,  com¬ 
rade  !”  he  said.  “.We  will  make  a  tighter  out  of  you !” 

Then  Ostriuski  in  turn  explained  his  circumstances. 
He  would  have  asked  Jurgis  to  his  home — but  he  had 
only  two  rooms,  and  had  no  bed  to  offer.  He  would  have 
given  up  his  own  bed,  but  his  wife  was  ill.  Later  on, 
when  he  understood  that  otherwise  Jurgis  would  have  to 
sleep  in  a  hallway,  he  offered  him  his  kitchen-floor,  a 
chance  which  the  other  was  only  too  glad  to  accept. 
“  Perhaps  to-morrow  we  can  do  better,”  said  Ostrinski. 
“  We  try  not  to  let  a  comrade  starve.” 

Ostrinski’s  home  was  in  the  Ghetto  district,  where  lie 
had  two  rooms  in  the  basement  of  a  tenement.  There  was 
a  baby  crying  as  they  entered,  and  he  closed  the  door 
leading  into  the  bedroom.  He  had  three  young  children, 
he  explained,  and  a  baby  had  just  come.  He  drew  up  two 
chairs  near  the  kitchen  stove,  adding  that  Jurgis  must  ex¬ 
cuse  thecdisorder  of  the  place, since  at  such  a  time  one’s  do¬ 
mestic  arrangements  were  upset.  Half  of  the  kitchen  was 
given  up  to  a  work-bench,  which  was  piled  with  clothing, 
and  Ostrinski  explained  that  he  was  a  “  pants-finisher.” 
He  brought  great  bundles  of  clothing  here  to  his  home, 
where  he  and  his  wife  worked  on  them.  He  made  a  living 
at  it,  but  it  was  getting  harder  all  the  time,  because  his 
eyes  were  failing.  What  would  come  when  they  gave  out 
he  could  not  tell ;  there  had  been  no  saving  anything — 
a  man  could  barely  keep  alive  by  twelve  or  fourteen  hours* 
work  a  day.  The  finishing  of  pants  did  not  take  much 
skill,  and  anybody  could  learn  it,  and  so  the  pay  was  for¬ 
ever  getting  less.  That  was  the  competitive  wage  system; 
and  if  Jurgis  wanted  to  understand  what  Socialism  was, 
it  was  there  he  had  best  begin.  The  workers  were  de¬ 
pendent  upon  a  job  to  exist  from  day  to  day,  and  so 
they  bid  against  each  other,  and  no  man  could  get  more 
than  the  lowest  man  would  consent  to  work  for.  And 
thus  the  mass  of  the  people  were  always  in  a  life-and- 
death  struggle  with  poverty.  That  was  “  competition,” 
so  far  as  it  concerned  the  wage-earner,  the  man  who 
had  only  his  labor  to  sell;  to  those  on  top,  the  exploiters, 


THE  JUNGLE 


373 


it  appeared  very  differently,  of  course  —  there  were  few 
of  them,  and  they  could  combine  and  dominate,  and 
their  power  would  be  unbi-eakable.  And  so  all  over  the 
world  two  classes  were  forming,  with  an  unbridged  chasm 
between  them,  —  the  capitalist  class,  with  its  enormous 
fortunes,  and  the  proletariat,  bound  into  slavery  by  un¬ 
seen  chains.  The  latter  were  a  thousand  to  one  in  num¬ 
bers,  but  they  were  ignorant  and  helpless,  and  they  would 
remain  at  the  mercy  of  their  exploiters  until  they  were 
organized  —  until  they  had  become  “  class-conscious.”  It 
was  a  slow  and  weary  process,  but  it  would  go  on  — it 
was  like  the  movement  of  a  glacier,  once  it  was  started 
it  could  never  be  stepped.  Every  Socialist  did  his  share, 
and  lived  upon  the  vision  of  the  “  good  time  coming,”  — 
when  the  working-class  should  go  to  the  polls  and  seize 
the  powers  of  government,  and  put  an  end  to  private  prop¬ 
erty  in  the  means  of  production.  No  matter  how  poor  a 
man  was,  or  how  much  he  suffered,  he  could  never  be 
really  unhappy  while  he  knew  of  that  future ;  even  if  he 
did  not  live  to  see  it  himself,  his  children  would,  and,  to  a 
Socialist,  the  victory  of  his  class  was  his  victory.  A''s^  he 
had  always  the  progress  to  encourage  him;  here  in  Un. 
cago,  for  instance,  the  movement  was  growing  by  leaps 
and  bounds.  Chicago  was  the  industrial  centre  of  the 
country,  and  nowhere  else  were  the  unions  so  strong ;  but 
their  organizations  did  the  workers  little  good,  for  the 
employers  were  organized,  also ;  and  so  the  strikes  gener¬ 
ally  failed,  and  as  fast  as  the  unions  were  broken  up  the 
men  were  coming  over  to  the  Socialists. 

Ostrinski  explained  the  organization  of  the  party,  the 
machinery  by  which  the  proletariat  was  educating  itself. 
There  were  “  locals  ”  in  every  big  city  and  town,  and  they 
were  being  organized  rapidly  in  the  smaller  places ;  a  local 
had  anywhere  from  six  to  a  thousand  members,  and  there 
were  fourteen  hundred  of  them  in  all,  with  a  total  of  about 
twenty-five  thousand  members,  who  paid  dues  to  support 
the  organization.  “  Local  Cook  County,”  as  the  city  or¬ 
ganization  was  called,  had  eighty  branch  locals,  and  it 
alone  was  spending  several  thousand  dollars  in  the  cam- 


374 


THE  JUNGLE 


paign.  It  published  a  weekly  in  English,  and  one  each  in 
Bohemian  and  German ;  also  there  was  a  monthly  published 
in  Chicago,  and  a  cooperative  publishing  house,  that  issued 
a  million  and  a  half  of  Socialist  books  and  pamphlets  every 
year.  All  this  was  the  growth  of  the  last  few  years  — 
there  had  been  almost  nothing  of  it  when  Ostrinski  lirst 
came  to  Chicago. 

Ostrinski  was  a  Pole,  about  fifty  years  of  age.  He  had 
lived  in  Silesia,  a  member  of  a  despised  and  persecuted 
race,  and  had  taken  part  in  the  proletarian  movement  in  the 
early  seventies,  when  Bismarck,  having  conquered  France, 
had  turned  his  policy  of  blood  and  iron  upon  the  “  Inter¬ 
national.”  Ostrinski  himself  had  twice  been  in  jail,  but 
he  had  been  young  then,  and  had  not  cared.  He  had  had 
more  of  his  share  of  the  fight,  though,  for  just  when  Social¬ 
ism  had  broken  all  its  barriers  and  become  the  great  political 
force  of  the  empire,  he  had  come  to  America,  and  begun 
all  over  again.  In  America  every  one  had  laughed  at  the 
mere  idea  of  Socialism  then  —  in  America  all  men  were 
free.  As  if  political  liberty  made  wage-Alay^ry  any  the 
more  tolerable  I  said  Ostrinski. 

The  little  tailor  sat  tilted  back  in  his  stiff  kitchen-chair, 
with  his  feet  stretched  out  upon  the  empty  stove,  and 
speaking  in  low  whispers,  so  as  not  to  waken  those  in  the 
next  room.  To  Jurgis  he  seemed  a  scarcely  less  wonder¬ 
ful  person  than  the  speaker  at  the  meeting;  he  was  poor, 
the  lowest  of  the  low,  hunger-driven  and  miserable  —  and 
yet  how  much  he  knew,  how  much  he  had  dared  and 
achieved,  what  a  hero  he  had  been  1  There  were  others 
like  him,  too  —  thousands  like  him,  and  all  of  them  work¬ 
ing-men  I  That  all  this  wonderful  machinery  of  progress 
had  been  created  by  his  fellows  —  Jurgis  could  not  believe 
it,  it  seemed  too  good  to  be  true. 

That  was  always  the  way,  said  Ostrinski ;  when  a 
man  was  first  converted  to  Socialism  he  was  like  a  craz} 
person,  —  he  could  not  understand  how  others  could  fail  to 
see  it,  and  he  expected  to  convert  all  the  world  the  first- 
week.  After  a  while  he  would  realize  how  hard  a  task  it 
was  ;  and  then  it  would  be  fortunate  that  other  new  hand£ 


THE  JUNGHE 


375 


kept  coming,  to  save  him  from  settling  down  into  a  rut. 
Just  now  Jurgis  would  have  plenty  of  chance  to  vent  his 
excitement,  for  a  presidential  campaign  was  on,  and  every¬ 
body  was  talking  politics.  Ostrinski  would  take  him  to 
the  next  meeting  of  the  branch-local,  and  introduce  him, 
and  he  might  join  the  party.  The  dues  were  five  cents  a 
week,  but  any  one  who  could  not  afford  this  might  be  ex¬ 
cused  from  paying.  The  Socialist  party  was  a  really  demo¬ 
cratic  political  organization — it  was  controlled  absolutely 
by  its  own  membership,  and  had  no  bosses.  All  of  these 
things  Ostrinski  explained,  as  also  the  principles  of  the 
party.  You  might  say  that  there  was  really  but  one 
Socialist  principle  —  that  of  “  no  compromise,”  which  was 
the  essence  of  the  prole^^^arian  movement  all  over  the 
world.  When  a  Socialist  »ras  elected  to  office  he  voted 
with  old  party  legislators  for  any  measure  that  was  likely 
to  be  of  help  to  the  working-class,  but  he  never  forgot 
that  these  concessions,  whatever  they  might  be,  were 
trifles  compared  with  the  great  purpose,  —  tlie  organizing 
of  the  working-class  for  the  revolution.  So  far,  the  rule  in 
America  had  been  that  one  Socialist  made  another  Socialist 
once  every  two  years ;  and  if  they  should  maintain  the 
same  rate  they  would  carry  the  country  in  1912  —  though 
not  all  of  them  expected  to  succeed  as  quickly  as  that. 

The  Socialists  were  organized  in  every  civilized  nation; 
it  was  an  international  political  party,  said  Ostrinski,  the 
greatest  the  world  had  ever  known.  It  numbered  thirty 
millions  of  adherents,  and  it  cast  eight  million  votes.  It 
had  started  its  first  newspaper  in  Japan,  and  elected  its  first 
deputy  in  Argentina;  in  France  it  named  members  of  cab¬ 
inets,  and  in  Italy  and  Australia  it  held  the  balance  of 
power  and  turned  out  ministries.  In  German}^  where  its 
vote  was  more  than  a  third  of  the  total  vote  of  the  empire, 
all  other  parties  and  powers  had  united  to  fight  it.  It 
would  not  do,  Ostrinski  explained,  for  the  proletariat  of 
one  nation  to  achieve  the  victory  for  that  nation  would  be 
crushed  by  the  military  power  of  the  others;  and  so  the 
Socialist  movement  was  a  world  movement, an  organization 
of  all  mankind  to  eatii-blisb.  liberty  and  fraternity.  It  was 


376 


THE  JUNGLE 


the  new  religion  of  humanity — or  you  might  say  it  was 
the  fulfilment  of  the  old  religion,  since  it  implied  but  the 
literal  application  of  all  the  teachings  of  Christ. 

Until  long  after  midnight  Jurgis  sat  lost  in  the  conver¬ 
sation  of  his  new  acquaintance.  It  was  a  most  wonderful 
experience  to  him — an  almost  supernatural  experience. 
It  was  like  encountering  an  inhabitant  of  the  fourth  dimen¬ 
sion  of  space,  a  being  who  was  free  from  all  one’s  own 
limitations.  For  four  years,  now,  Jurgis  had  been  wander¬ 
ing  and  blundering  in  the  depths  of  a  wilderness;  and  here, 
suddenly,  a  hand  reached  down  and  seized  him,  and  lifted 
him  out  of  it,  and  set  him  upon  a  mountain-top,  from 
which  he  could  survey  it  all, — could  see  the  paths  from 
which  he  had  wandered,  the  morasses  into  which  he  had 
stumbled,  the  hiding-places  of  the  beasts  of  prey  that  had 
fallen  upon  him.  IJiere..  were  his  Packingtown  experi¬ 
ences,  for  instance — what  was  there  about  Packingtown 
that  Ostrinski  could  not  explain!  To  Jurgis  the  packers 
had  been  equivalent  to  fate ;  Ostrinski  showed  him  that 
they  were  the  Beef  Trust.  They  were  a  gigantic  combi¬ 
nation  of  capital,  which  had  crushed  all  opposition,  and 
overthrown  the  laws  of  the  land,  and  was  preying  upon  the 
people.  Jurgis  recollected  how,  when  he  had  first  come  to 
Packingtown,  he  had  stood  and  watched  the  hog-kilhng, 
and  thought  how  cruel  and  savage  it  was,  and  come  away 
congratulating  himself  that  he  was  not  a  hog;  now  his  new 
acquaintance  showed  him  that  a  hog  was  just  what  he  had 
been — one  of  the  packers’  hogs.  jWhat  they  wanted  from 
a  hog  was  all  the  profits  that  could  be  got  out  of  him;  and 
that  was  what  they  wanted  from  the  working-man, and  also 
that  was  what  they  wanted  from  the  public;  What  the  hog 
thought  of  it,  and  what  he  suffered,  were^not  considered; 
and  no  more  was  it  with  labor,  and  no  more  with  the  pur¬ 
chaser  of  meat.  That  was  true  everywhere  in  the  world, 
but  it  was  especially  true  in  Packingtown;  there  seemed 
to  be  something  about  the  work  of  slaughtering  that  tended 
to  ruthlessness  and  ferocity — it  was  literally  the  fact  that 
in  the  methods  of  the  packers  a  hundred  human  lives  did 


THE  JUNGLE 


377 


not  balance  a  penny  of  profit.  When  Jurgis  had  made 
himself  familiar  with  the  Socialist  literature,  as  he  would 
very  quickly,  he  would  get  glimpses  of  the  Beef  Trust 
from  all  sorts  of  aspects,  and  he  would  find  it  everywhere 
the  same;  it  was  the  incarnation  of  blind  and  insensate 
Greed.  It  was  a  monster  devouring  with  a  thousand 
mouths,  trampling  with  a  thousand  hoofs;  it  was  the 
Great  Butcher  —  it  was  the  spirit  of  Capitalism  made  flesh. 
Upon  the  ocean  of  commerce  it  sailed  as  a  pirate  ship ;  it 
had  hoisted  the  black  flag  and  declared  war  upon  ci’dliza- 
tiom  Bribery  and  corruption  were  its  everyday  methods. 
In  Chicago  the  city  government  was  simply  one  of  its 
branch-offices;  it  stole  billions  of  gallons  of  city  water 
openly,  it  dictated  to  the  courts  the  sentences  of  disorderly 
strikers,  it  forbade  the  mayor  to  enforce  the  building  laws 
against  it.  In  the  national  capital  it  had  power  to  prevent 
inspection  of  its  product,  and  to  falsify  government 
reports;  it  violated  the  rebate  laws,  and  when  an  investi¬ 
gation  was  threatened  it  burned  its  books  and  sent  its 
criminal  agents  out  of  the  country.  In  the  commercial 
world  it  was  a  .Juggernaut  car;  it  wiped “butlhousands  of 
businesses  every  year,  it  drove  men  to  madness  and  suicide. 
It  had  forced  the  price  of  cattle  so  low  as  to  destroy  the 
stock-raising  industry,  an  occupation  upon  which  whole 
states  existed;  it  had  ruined  thousands  of  butchers  who 
had  refused  to  handle  its- products.  It  divided  the  coun¬ 
try  into  districts,  and  fixed  the  price  of  meat  in  ail  of 
them  ;  and  it  owned  all  the  refi’igerator  cars,  and  levied  an 
enormous  tribute  upon  all  poultry  and  eggs  and  fruit  and 
vegetables.  With  the  millions  of  dollars  a  week  th-at 
poured  in  upon  it,  it  was  reaching  out  for  the  control  of 
other  interests,  railroads  and  trolley  lines,  gas  and  electric 
light  franchises  —  it  already  owned  the  leather  and  the 
grain  business  of  the  country.  The  people  were  tremen- 
dously  stirred  up  over  its  encroachments,  but  nobody  had 
any  remedy  to  suggest;  it  was  the  task  of  Socialists  to 
teach  and  organize  them,  and  prepare  them  for  the  tin>e 
when  they  were  to  seize  the  huge  machine  called  the  Beef 
Trust,  and  use  it  to  produce  food  for  human  beings  and 


25 


THE  JUNGLE 


STS 

not  to  heap  up  fortunes  for  a  band  of  pirates.  —  It  was 
long  after  midnight  when  Jurgis  lay  down  upon  the  floor  of 
Ostrinski’s  kitchen ;  and  yet  it  was  an  hour  before  he  could 
get  to  sleep,  for  the  glory  of  that  joyful  vision  of  the 
people  of  Packingtown  marching  in  and  taking  possession 
of  the  Union  Stockyards  1 


CHAPTER  XXX 


JURGis  had  breakfast  with  Ostrinski  and  his  family,  and 
then  he  went  home  to  Elzbieta.  He  was  no  longer  shy 
about  it  —  when  he  went  in,  instead  of  saying  all  the  things 
he  had  been  planning  to  say,  he  started  to  tell  Elzbieta 
about  the  revolution !  At  first  she  thought  he  was  out  of 
his  mind,  and  it  was  hours  before  she  could  really  feel 
certain  that  he  was  himself.  When,  however,  she  had 
satisfied  herself  that  he  was  sane  upon  all  subjects  except 
politics,  she  troubled  herself  no  further  about  it.  Jurgis 
was  destined  to  find  that  Elzbieta's  armor  was  absoluteK 
impervious  to  Socialism.  Her  soul  had  been  baked  hard  in 
the  fire  of  adversity,  and  there  was  no  altering  it  now ; 
life  to  her  was  the  hunt  for  daily  bread,  and  ideas  existed 
for  her  only  as  they  bore  upon  that.  All  that  interested 
her  in  regard  to  this  new  frenzy  which  had  seized  hold  of 
her  son-in-law  was  whether  or  not  it  had  a  tendency  to 
make  him  sober  and  industrious ;  and  when  she  found  he 
intended  to  look  for  work  and  to  contribute  bis  share  to  the 
family  fund,  she  gave  him  full  rein  to  convince  her  of  any¬ 
thing.  A  wonderfully  wise  little  woman  was  Elzbieta; 
she  could  think  as  quickly  as  a  hunted  rabbit,  and  in  half 
an  hour  she  had  chosen  her  life -attitude  to  the  Socialist 
movement.  She  agreed  in  everything  with  Jurgis,  except 
the  need  of  his  paying  his  dues ;  and  she  would  even  go  to 
a  meeting  with  him  now  and  then,  and  sit  and  plan  her 
next  day’s  dinner  amid  the  storm. 

For  a  week  after  he  became  a  convert  Jurgis  continued 
to  wander  about  all  day,  looking  for  work ;  until  at  last 
he  met  with  a  strange  fortune.  He  was  passing  one  of 

«79 


880 


THE  JUNGLE 


Chicago’s  innumerable  small  hotels,  and  after  some  hesita^ 
tion  he  concluded  to  go  in.  A  man  he  took  for  the  pro¬ 
prietor  was  standing  in  the  lobby,  and  he  went  up  to  him 
and  tackled  him  for  a  job. 

“  What  can  you  do  ?  ”  the  man  asked, 

“Anything,  sir,”  said  Jurgis,  and  added  quickly;  “I’ve 
been  out  of  work  for  a  long  time,  sir.  I’m  an  honest  man, 
and  I’m  strong  and  willing  —  ” 

The  other  was 
he  asked. 

“No,  sir,”  said  Jurgis. 

“Well,  I’ve  been  employing  a  man  as  a  porter,  and  he 
drinks.  I’ve  discharged  him  seven  times  now,  and  I’ve 
about  made  up  my  mind  that’s  enough.  Would  you  be  a 
porter?” 

“  Yes,  sir.” 

“  It’s  hard  work.  You’ll  have  to  clean  floors  and  wash 
spittoons  and  fill  lamps  and  handle  trunks- — ” 

“  I’m  willing,  sir.” 

“  All  right.  I’ll  pay  you  thirty  a  month  and  board,  and 
you  can  begin  now,  if  you  feel  like  it.  You  can  put  on  the 
other  fellow’s  rig.” 

And  so  Jurgis  fell  to  work,  and  toiled  like  a  Trojan  till 
night.  Then  he  went  and  told  Elzbieta,  and  also,  late  as 
it  was,  he  paid  a  visit  to  Ostrinski  to  let  him  know  of  his 
good  fortune.  Here  he  received  a  great  surprise,  for  when 
he  was  describing  the  location  of  the  hotel  Ostrinski  inter¬ 
rupted  suddenly,  “  Not  Hinds’s  I  ” 

“Yes,”  said  Jurgis,  “that’s  the  name.” 

To  which  the  other  replied,  “  Then  you’ve  got  the  best 
boss  in  Chicago  —  he’s  a  state  organizer  of  our  party,  and 
one  of  our  best-known  speakers  I  ” 

So  the  next  morning  Jurgis  went  to  his  employer  and 
told  him ;  and  the  man  seized  him  by  the  hand  and  shook 
“By  Jove  I”  he  cried,  “that  lets  me  out.  I  didn’t 
sleep  all  last  night  because  I  had  discharged  a  good  Social¬ 
ist!  ” 

So,  after  that,  Jurgis  was  known  to  his  “boss”  as  “Com¬ 
rade  Jurgis,”  and  in  return  he  was  expected  to  call  him 


eying  him  narrowly.  “  Do  you  drink? 


THE  JUNGLE 


383. 


**  Comrade  Hindso”  Tommy  ”  Hinds,  as  he  was  known  to 
his  intimates,  was  a  squat  little  man,  with  broad  shoulders 
and  a  florid  face,  decorated  with  gray  side-whiskers.  He 
was  the  kindest-hearted  man  that  ever  lived,  and  the 
liveliest— -inexhaustible  in  his  enthusiasm,  and  talking 
Socialism  all  day  and  all  night.  He  was  a  great  fellow  to 
jolly  along  a  crowd,  and  would  keep  a  meeting  in  an 
uproar;  when  once  he  got  really  waked  up,  the  torrent 
of  his  eloquence  could  be  compared  with  nothing  save 
Niagara. 

Tommy  Hinds  had  begun  life  as  a  blacksmith’s  helper, 
and  had.  run  away  to  join  the  Union  army,  where  he  had 
made  his  first  acquaintance  with  “  graft,”  in  the  shape  of 
rotten  muskets  and  shoddy  blankets.  To  a  musket  that 
broke  in  a  crisis  he  always  attributed  the  death  of  his  only 
brother,  and  upon  worthless  blankets  he  blamed  all  the 
agonies  of  his  own  old  age.  Whenever  it  rained,  the 
rheumatism  would  get  into  his  joints,  and  then  he  would 
screw  up  his  face  and  mutter:  “Capitalism,  my  boy,  Capi¬ 
talism  I  ‘  Ecrasez  VInfdme  !  ’  ”  He  had  one  unfailing 
remedy  for  all  the  evils  of  this  world,  and  he  preached  it 
to  every  one  ;  no  matter  whether  the  person’s  trouble  was 
failure  in  business,  or  dyspepsia,  or  a  quarrelsome  mother- 
in-law,  a  twinkle  would  come  into  his  eyes  and  he  would 
say,  “You  know  what  to  do  about  it  —  vote  the  Socialist 
ticket !  ” 

Tommy  Hinds  had  set  out  upon  the  trail  of  the  Octopus 
as  soon  as  the  war  was  over.  He  had  gone  into  business, 
and  found  himself  in  competition  with  the  fortunes  of  those 
who  had  been  stealing  while  he  had  been  fighting.  The 
city  government  was  in  their  hands  and  the  railroads  were 
in  league  with  them,  and  honest  business  was  driven  to  the 
wall ;  and  so  Hinds  had  put  all  his  savings  into  Chicago 
real  estate,  and  set  out  single-handed  to  dam  the  river  of 
graft.  He  had  been  a  reform  member  of  the  city  council, 
he  had  been  a  Greenbacker,  a  Labor  Unionist,  a  Populist, 
a  Bryanite  —  and  after  thirty  years  of  fighting,  the  year 
1896  had  served  to  convince  him  that  the  power  of  concen 
trated  wealth  could  never  be  controlled,  but  could  only  be 


382 


THE  JUNGLE 


destroyed.  He  had  published  a  pamphlet  about  it,  and  set 
out  to  organize  a  party  of  his  own,  when  a  stray  Socialist 
leaflet  had  revealed  to  him  that  others  had  been  ahead  of 
him.  Now  for  eight  years  he  had  been  fighting  for  the 
party,  anywhere,  everywhere  —  whether  it  was  a  G.  A.  R, 
reunion,  or  a  hotel-keepers’  convention,  or  an  Afro-Ameri¬ 
can  business-men’s  banquet,  or  a  Bible  society  picnic. 
Tommy  Hinds  would  manage  to  get  himself  invited  to 
explain  the  relations  of  Socialism  to  the  subject  in  hand. 
After  that  he  would  start  off  upon  a  tour  of  his  own,  end¬ 
ing  at  some  place  between  New  York  and  Oregon ;  and 
when  he  came  back  from  there,  he  would  go  out  to  organize 
new  locals  for  the  state  committee ;  and  finally  he  would 
come  home  to  rest — and  talk  Socialism  in  Chicago. 
Hinds’s  hotel  was  a  very  hot-bed  of  the  propaganda  ;  all 
the  employees  were  party  men,  and  if  they  were  not  when 
they  came,  they  were  quite  certain  to  be  before  they  went 
away.  The  proprietor  would  get  into  a  discussion  with 
some  one  in  the  lobby,  and  as  the  conversation  grew  ani¬ 
mated,  others  would  gather  about  to  listen,  until  finally  every 
one  in  the  place  would  be  crowded  into  a  group,  and  a 
regular  debate  would  be  under  way.  This  went  on  every 
night  —  when  Tommy  Hinds  was  not  there  to  do  it,  bis 
clerk  did  it ;  and  when  his  clerk  was  away  campaigning,  the 
assistant  attended  to  it,  while  Mrs.  Hinds  sat  behind  the 
desk  and  did  the  work.  The  clerk  was  an  old  crony  of 
the  proprietor’s,  an  awkward,  raw-boned  giant  of  a  man, 
with  a  lean,  sallow  face,  a  broad  mouth,  and  whiskers  under 
his  chin,  the  very  type  and  body  of  a  prairie  farmer.  He 
had  been  that  all  his  life  —  he  had  fought  the  railroads  in 
Kansas  for  fifty  years,  a  Granger,  a  Farmers’  Alliance  man, 
a  “  middle-of-the-road  ”  Populist.  Finally,  Tommy  Hinds 
had  revealed  to  him  the  wonderful  idea  of  using  the  trusts 
instead  of  destroying  them,  and  he  had  sold  his  farm  and 
come  to  Chicago. 

That  was  Amos  Struver;  and  then  there  was  Harry 
Adams,  the  assistant  clerk,  a  pale,  scholarly-looking  man, 
who  came  from  Massachusetts,  of  Pilgrim  stock.  Adams 
had  been  a  cotton  operative  in  Fall  River,  and  the  con- 


THE  JUNGLE 


383 


tinued  depression  in  the  industry  had  worn  him  and  his 
family  out,  and  he  had  emigrated  to  South  Carolina.  In 
Massachusetts  the  percentage  of  white  illiteracy  is  eight- 
tenths  of  one  per  cent,  while  in  South  Carolina  it  is 
thirteen  and  six-tenths  per  cent;  also  in  South  Carolina 
there  is  a  property  qualification  for  voters  —  and  for  these 
and  other  reasons  child-labor  is  the  rule,  and  so  the  cotton 
mills  were  driving  those  of  Massachusetts  out  of  the  busi¬ 
ness.  Adams  did  not  know  this,  he  only  knew  that  the 
Southern  mills  were  running ;  but  when  he  got  there  he 
found  that  if  he  was  to  live,  all  his  family  would  have  to 
work,  and  from  six  o’clock  at  night  to  six  o’clock  in  the 
morning.  So  he  had  set  to  work  to  organize  the  mill- 
hands,  after  the  fashion  in  Massachusetts,  and  had  been 
discharged  ;  but  he  had  gotten  other  work,  and  stuck  at  it, 
and  at  last  there  had  been  a  strike  for  shorter  hours,  and 
Harry  Adams  had  attempted  to  address  a  street  meeting, 
which  was  the  end  of  him.  In  the  states  of  the  far  South 
the  labor  of  convicts  is  leased  to  contractors,  and  when 
there  are  not  convicts  enough  they  have  to  be  supplied. 
Harry  Adams  was  sent  up  by  a  judge  who  was  a  cousin  of 
the  mill-owner  with  whose  business  he  had  interfered;  and 
though  the  life  had  nearly  killed  him,  he  had  been  wise 
enough  not  to  murmur,  and  at  the  end  of  his  terra  he  and 
his  family  had  left  the  state  of  South  Carolina  —  hell’s 
back  yard,  as  he  called  it.  He  had  no  money  for  car-fare, 
but  it  was  harvest-time,  and  they  walked  one  day  and 
worked  the  next ;  and  so  Adams  got  at  last  to  Chicago, 
and  joined  the  Socialist  party.  He  was  a  studious  man, 
reserved,  and  nothing  of  an  orator ;  but  he  always  had  a- 
pile  of  books  under  his  desk  in  the  hotel,  and  articles  from 
his  pen  were  beginning  to  attract  attention  in  the  party 
press. 

Contrary  to  what  one  would  have  expected,  all  this 
radicalism  did  not  hurt  the  hotel  business;  the  radicals 
flocked  to  it,  and  the  commercial  travellers  all  found  it 
diverting.  Of  late,  also,  the  hotel  had  become  a  favorite 
stopping-place  for  Western  cattlemen.  Now  that  the  Beef 
Trust  had  adopted  the  trick  of  raising  prices  to  induce 


384 


THE  JUNGLE 


enormous  shipments  of  cattle,  and  then  dropping  them 
again  and  scooping  in  all  they  needed,  a  stock-raiser  was 
very  apt  to  find  himself  in  Chicago  without  money  enough 
to  pay  his  freight  bill ;  and  so  he  had  to  go  to  a  cheap  hotel, 
and  it  was  no  drawback  to  him  if  there  was  an  agitator 
talking  in  the  lobby.  These  Western  fellows  were  just 
“meat”  for  Tommy  Hinds — he  would  get  a  dozen  of 
them  around  him  and  paint  little  pictures  of  “  the  Sys¬ 
tem.”  Of  course,  it  was  not  a  week  before  he  had  heard 
Jurgis’s  story,  and  after  that  he  would  not  have  let  his 
new  porter  go  for  the  world.  “  See  here,”  he  would  say,  in 
the  middle  of  an  argument,  “  I’ve  got  a  fellow  right  here 
in  ray  place  who’s  worked  there  and  seen  every  bit  of  it !  ” 
And  then  Jurgis  would  drop  his  work,  whatever  it  was, 
and  come,  and  the  other  would  say,  “  Comrade  Jurgis,  just 
tell  these  gentlemen  what  you  saw  on  the  killing-beds.” 
At  first  this  request  caused  poor  Jurgis  the  most  acute 
agony,  and  it  wa,s  like  pulling  teeth  to  get  him  to  talk ; 
but  gradually  he  found  out  what  was  wanted,  and  in  the 
end  he  learned  to  stand  up  and  speak  his  piece  with  enthu¬ 
siasm.  His  employer  would  sit  by  and  encourage  him  with 
exclamations  and  shakes  of  the  head  ;  when  Jurgis  would 
give  the  formula  for  “  potted  ham,”  or  tell  about  the 
condemned  hogs  that  were  dropped  into  the  “  destructors  ” 
at  the  top  and  immediately  taken  out  again  at  the  bottom,  to 
be  shipped  into  another  state  and  made  into  lard.  Tommy 
Hinds  would  bang  his  knee  and  cry,  “Do  you  think  a 
man  could  make  up  a  thing  like  that  out  of  his  head  ?  ” 
And  then  the  hotel-keeper  would  go  on  to  show  how 
the  Socialists  had  the  only  real  remedy  for  such  evils,  how 
they  alone  “  meant  business  ”  with  the  Beef  Trust.  And 
when,  in  answer  to  this,  the  victim  would  say  that  the 
whole  country  was  getting  stirred  up,  that  the  newspapers 
were  full  of  denunciations  of  it,  and  the  government  tak¬ 
ing  action  against  it.  Tommy  Hinds  had  a  knock-out  blow 
all  ready.  “Yes,”  he  would  say,  “  all  that  is  true  —  but 
what  do  you  suppose  is  the  reason  for  it?  Are  you  foolish 
enough  to  believe  that  it’s  done  for  the  public?  There  are 
other  trusts  in  the  country  just  as  illegal  and  extortionate 


THE  JUNGLE 


385 


as  the  Beef  Trust :  there  is  the  Coal  Trust,  that  freezes 
the  poor  in  winter — there  is  the  Steel  Trust,  that  doubles 
the  price  of  every  nail  in  your  shoes  —  there  is  the  Oil 
Trust,  that  keeps  you  from  reading  at  night  —  and  why  do 
you  suppose  it  is  that  all  the  fury  of  the  press  and  the 
government  is  directed  against  the  Beef  Trust?”  And  when 
to  this  the  victim  would  reply  that  there  was  clamor  enough 
over  the  Oil  Trust,  the  other  would  continue :  “  Ten  years 
ago  Henry  D.  Lloyd  told  all  the  truth  about  the  Standard 
Oil  Company  in  his  ‘  Wealth  versus  Commonwealth  ’ ;  and 
the  book  was  allowed  to  die,  and  you  hardly  ever  hear  of 
it.  And  now,  at  last,  two  magazines  have  the  courage  to 
tackle  ‘  Standard  Oil  ’  again,  and  what  happens  ?  The 
newspapers  ridicule  the  authors,  the  churches  defend  the 
criminals,  and  the  government  —  does  nothing.  And  now, 
why  is  it  all  so  different  with  the  Beef  Trust  ?  ” 

Here  the  other  would  generally  admit  that  he  was 
“  stuck  ” ;  and  Tommy  Hinds  would  explain  to  him,  and  it 
was  fun  to  see  his  eyes  open.  “  If  you  were  a  Socialist,” 
the  hotel-keeper  would  say,  “  you  would  understand  that 
the  power  which  really  governs  the  United  States  to-day 
is  the  Railroad  Trust.  It  is  the  Railroad  Trust  that  I’unf 
your  state  government,  wherever  you  live,  and  that  run 
the  United  States  Senate.  And  all  of  the  trusts  that 
have  named  are  railroad  trusts  —  save  only  the  Bee 
Trust!  The  Beef  Trust  has  defied  the  railroads  —  it  k 
plundering  them  day  by  day  through  the  Private  Car;  and 
80  the  public  is  roused  to  fury,  and  the  papers  clamor  for 
action,  and  the  government  goes  on  the  war-path!  And 
you  poor  common  people  watch  and  applaud  the  job,  and 
think  it’s  all  done  for  you,  and  never  dream  that  it  is 
really  the  grand  climax  of  the  century-long  battle  of  com¬ 
mercial  competition,  —  the  final  death-grapple  between  the 
chiefs  of  the  Beef  Trust  and  ‘  Standard  Oil,’  for  the  prize 
of  the  mastery  and  ownership  of  the  United  States  of 
America !  ” 

Such  was  the  new  home  in  which  .Jurgis  lived  and 
worked,  and  in  which  his  education  was  completed.  Per- 


386 


THE  JUNGLE 


haps  you  would  imagine  that  he  did  not  do  much  work 
there,  but  that  would  be  a  great  mistake.  He  would  have 
cut  off  one  hand  for  Tommy  Hinds ;  and  to  keep  Hinds’s 
hotel  a  thing  of  beauty  was  his  joy  in  life.  That  he  had  a 
score  of  Socialist  arguments  chasing  through  his  brain  in 
the  meantime  did  not  interfere  with  this ;  on  the  contrary, 
Jurgis  scrubbed  the  spittoons  and  polished  the  banisters  all 
the  more  vehemently  because  at  the  same  time  he  was 
wrestling  inwardly  with  an  imaginary  recalcitrant.  It 
would  be  pleasant  to  record  that  he  swore  off  drinking 
immediately,  and  all  the  rest  of  his  bad  habits  with  it;  but 
that  would  hardly  be  exact.  These  revolutionists  were 
not  angels ;  they  were  men,  and  men  who  had  come  up 
from  the  social  pit,  and  with  the  mire  of  it  smeared  over 
them.  Some  of  them  drank,  and  some  of  them  swore,  and 
some  of  them  ate  pie  with  their  knives  ;  there  was  only  one 
difference  between  them  and  all  the  rest  of  the  populace  — 
that  they  were  men  with  a  hope,  with  a  cause  to  fight  for 
•and  suffer  for.  There  came  times  to  J urgis  when  the  vision 
seemed  far-off'  and  pale,  and  a  glass  of  beer  loomed  large  in 
comparison;  but  if  the  glass  led  to  another  glass,  and  to  too 
many  glasses,  he  had  something  to  spur  him  to  remorse  and 
resolution  on  the  morrow.  It  was  so  evidently  a  wicked 
thing  to  spend  one’s  pennies  for  drink,  when  the  working- 
class  was  wandering  in  darkness,  and  waiting  to  be  de¬ 
livered  ;  the  price  of  a  glass  of  beer  would  buy  fifty  copies 
of  a  leaflet,  and  one  could  hand  these  out  to  the  unregener¬ 
ate,  and  then  get  drunk  upon  the  thought  of  the  good  that 
was  being  accomplished.  That  was  the  way  the  movement 
had  been  made,  and  it  was  the  only  way  it  would  progress ; 
it  availed  nothing  to  know  of  it,  without  fighting  for  it  — 
it  was  a  thing  for  all,  not  for  a  few  I  A  corollary  of  this 
proposition  of  course  was,  that  any  one  who  refused  to  re¬ 
ceive  the  new  gospel  was  personally  responsible  for  keep¬ 
ing  Jurgis  from  his  heart’s  desire ;  and  this,  alas,  made 
him  uncomfortable  as  an  acquaintance.  He  met  some 
neighbors  with  whom  Elzbieta  had  made  friends  in  her 
neighborhood,  and  he  set  out  to  make  Socialists  of  them 
by  wholesale,  and  several  times  he  all  but  got  into  a  fight. 


THE  JUNGLE 


OS')* 

It  was  aU  so  painfully  obvious  to  Jurgfis  T  It  was  so  in¬ 
comprehensible  how  a  man  could  fail  to  see  it !  Here  were 
all  the  opportunities  of  the  country,  the  land,  and  the  build¬ 
ings  upon  the  land,  the  railroads,  the  mines,  the  factories, 
and  the  stores,  all  in  the  hands  of  a  few  private  individuals, 
called  capitalists,  for  whom  the  people  were  obliged  to 
work  for  wages.  The  whole  balance  of  what  the  people 
produced  went  to  heap  up  the  fortunes  of  these  capitalists, 
to  heap,  and  heap  again,  and  yet  again  —  and  that  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  they,  and  every  one  about  them,  lived  in  un¬ 
thinkable  luxury!  And  was  it  not  plain  that  if  the  people 
cut  off  the  share  of  those  who  merely  “owned,”  the  share  of 
those  who  worked  would  be  much  greater  ?  That  was  as 
plain  as  two  and  two  makes  four;  and  it  was  the  whole  of  it, 
absolutely  the  whole  of  it;  and  yet  there  were  people  who 
could  not  see  it,  who  would  argue  about  everything  else  in 
the  world.  They  would  tell  you  that  governments  could 
not  manage  things  as  economically  as  private  individuals ; 
they  would  repeat  and  repeat  that,  and  think  they  were  ' 
saying  something  I  They  could  not  see  that  “  economical  ” 
management  by  masters  meant  simply  that  they,  the  people, 
were  worked  harder  and  ground  closer  and  paid  less! 
They  were  wage-earners  and  servants,  at  the  mercy  of  ex¬ 
ploiters  whose  one  thought  was  to  get  as  much  out  of  them 
as  possible;  and  they  were  taking  an  interest  in  the  process, 
were  anxious  lest  it  should  not  be  done  thoroughly  enough  ! 
Was  it  not  honestly  a  trial  to  listen  to  an  argument  such 
as  that? 

And  yet  there  were  things  even  worse,  Ton  would 
begin  talking  to  some  poor  devil  who  had  worked  in  one 
shop  for  the  last  thirty  years,  and  had  never  been  able  to 
save  a  penny ;  v/ho  left  home  every  morning  at  six  o’clock, 
to  go  and  tend  a  machine,  and  come  back  at  night  too  tired 
to  take  his  clothes  off ;  who  had  never  had  a  week’s  vaca¬ 
tion  in  his  life,  had  never  travelled,  never  had  an  adventure,- 
never  learned  anything,  never  hoped  anything- -and  when 
you  started  to  tell  him  about  Socialism  he  would  sniff  and 
say,  “  I’m  not  interested  in  that  —  I’m  an  individualist ! 
And  then  h«  would  go  on  to  tell  you  that  Socialism  wa/? 


388 


THE  JUNGLE 


“Paternalism,”  and  that  if  it  ever  had  its  way  the  world 
would  stop  progressing.  It  was  enough  to  make  a  mule 
laugh,  to  hear  arguments  like  that;  and  yet  it  was  no 
laughing  matter,  as  you  found  out — for  how  many  mil¬ 
lions  of  such  poor  deluded  wretches  there  were,  whose  lives 
had  been  so  stunted  by  Capitalism  that  they  no  longer 
knew  what  freedom  was !  And  they  really  thought  that  it 
was  “  Individualism  ”  for  tens  of  thousands  of  them  to  herd 
together  and  obey  the  orders  of  a  steel  magnate,  and  pro¬ 
duce  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  of  wealth  for  him,  and 
then  let  him  give  them  libraries ;  while  for  them  to  take 
the  industry,  and  run  it  to  suit  themselves,  and  build  their 
own  libraries — that  would  have  been  “Paternalism”  ! 

Sometimes  the  agony  of  such  things  as  this  was  almost  more 
than  Jurgis  could  bear ;  yet  there  was  no  way  of  escape  from 
it,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  dig  away  at  the  base  of 
this  mountain  of  ignorance  and  prejudice.  You  must  keep 
at  the  poor  fellow  ;  you  must  hold  your  temper,  and  argue 
with  him,  and  watch  for  your  chance  to  stick  an  idea  or  two 
into  his  head.  And  the  rest  of  the  time  you  must  sharpen 
up  your  weapons, — you  must  think  out  new  replies  to 
his  objections,  and  provide  yourself  with  new  facts  to 
prove  to  him  the  folly  of  his  ways. 

So  Jui’gis  acquired  the  reading  habit.  He  would  carry 
in  his  pocket  a  tract  or  a  pamphlet  which  some  one  had 
loaned  him,  and  whenever  he  had  an  idle  moment  dur¬ 
ing  the  day  he  would  plod  through  a  paragraph,  and 
then  think  about  it  while  he  worked.  Also  he  read 
the  newspapers,  and  asked  questions  about  them.  One  of 
the  other  porters  at  Hinds’s  was  a  sharp  little  Irishman,  who 
knew  everything  that  Jurgis  wanted  to  know;  and  while 
they  were  busy  he  would  explain  to  him  the  geography  of 
America,  and  its  history,  its  constitution  and  its  laws ;  also 
he  gave  him  an  idea  of  the  business  system  of  the  country, 
the  great  railroads  and  corporations,  and  who  owned  them, 
and  the  labor  unions,  and  the  big  strikes,  and  the  men  who 
had  led  them.  Then  at  night,  when  he  could  get  off,  Jur¬ 
gis  would  attend  the  Socialist  meetings.  During  the  cam¬ 
paign  one  was  not  dependent  upon  the  street-corner  affairs. 


THE  JUNGLE 


389 


where  the  weather  and  the  quality  of  the  orator  were  equally 
uncertain ;  there  were  hall  meetings  every  night,  and  one 
could  hear  speakers  of  national  prominence.  These  dis¬ 
cussed  the  political  situation  from  every  point  of  view, 
and  all  that  troubled  Jurgis  was  the  impossibility  of  carry¬ 
ing  off  but  a  small  part  of  the  treasures  they  offered  him. 

There  was  a  man  who  was  known  in  the  party  as  the 
“  Little  Giant.”  The  Lord  had  used  up  so  much  material 
in  the  making  of  his  head  that  there  had  not  been  enough 
to  complete  his  legs ;  but  he  got  about  on  the  platform, 
and  when  he  shook  his  raven  whiskers  tlie  pillars  of  Capi¬ 
talism  rocked.  He  had  written  a  veritable  encyclopaedia 
upon  the  subject,  a  book  that  was  nearly  as  big  as  himself. 
—  And  then  there  was  a  young  author,  who  came  from 
California,  and  had  been  a  salmon-tisher,  an  oyster-pirate, 
a  longshoreman,  a  sailor;  who  had  tramped  the  country 
and  been  sent  to  jail,  had  lived  in  the  Whitechapel  slums, 
and  been  to  the  Klondike  in  search  of  gold.  All  these 
things  he  pictured  in  his  books,  and  because  he  was  a  man 
of  genius  he  forced  the  world  to  hear  him.  Now  he  was 
famous,  but  wherever  he  went  he  still  preached  the  gospel 
of  the  poor.  —  And  then  there  was  one  who  was  known 
as  the  “millionnaire  Socialist.”  He  had  made  a  fortune  in 
buoineis,  and  spent  nearly  all  of  it  in  building  up  a  maga¬ 
zine,  which  the  post-office  department  had  tried  to  suppress, 
and  had  driven  to  Canada.  He  was  a  quiet-mannered  man, 
whom  you  would  have  taken  for  anything  in  the  world 
but  a  Socialist  agitator.  His  speech  was  simple  and  in¬ 
formal  —  he  could  not  understand  why  any  one  should  get 
excited  about  these  things.  It  was  a  process  of  economic 
evolution,  he  said,  and  he  exhibited  its  laws  and  methods. 
Life  was  a  struggle  for  existence,  and  the  strong  overcame 
the  weak,  and  in  turn  were  overcome  by  the  strongest. 
Those  who  lost  in  the  struggle  were  generally  exterminated; 
but  now  and  then  they  had  been  known  to  save  themselves 
by  combination  —  which  was  a  new  and  higher  kind  of 
strength.  It  was  so  that  the  gregarious  animals  had  over¬ 
come  the  predaceous ;  it  was  so,  in  human  history,  that 
the  people  had  mastered  the  kings.  The  workers  were 


390 


THE  JUNGLE 


simply  the  citizens  of  industry,  and  the  Socialist  movement 
was  the  expression  of  their  will  to  survive.  The  inevita¬ 
bility  of  the  revolution  depended  upon  this  fact,  that  they 
had  no  choice  but  to  unite  or  bo  exterminated ;  this  fact, 
grim  and  inexorable,  depended  upon  no  human  will,  it  was 
the  law  of  the  economic  process,  of  which  the  editor  showed 
the  details  with  the  most  marvellous  precision. 

And  later  on  came  the  evening  of  the  great  meeting  ot 
the  campaign,  when  Jurgis  heard  the  two  standard-bearers 
of  his  party.  Ten  years  before  there  had  been  in  Chicago 
a  strike  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  railroad  employees, 
and  thugs  had  been  hired  by  the  railroads  to  commit 
violence,  and  the  President  of  the  United  States  had  sent 
in  troops  to  break  the  strike,  by  flinging  the  officers  of  the 
union  into  jail  without  trial.  The  president  of  the  union 
came  out  of  his  cell  a  ruined  man ;  but  also  he  came  out  a 
Socialist;  and  now  for  just  ten  years  he  had  been  travelling 
up  and  down  the  country,  standing  face  to  face  with  the 
people,  and  pleading  with  them  for  justice.  He  was  a  man 
of  electric  presence,  tall  and  gaunt,  with  a  face  worn  thin 
by  struggle  and  suffering.  The  fury  of  outraged  manhood 
gleamed  in  it  —  and  the  tears  of  suffering  little  children 
pleaded  in  his  voice.  When  he  spoke  he  paced  the  stage, 
lithe  and  eager,  like  a  panther.  He  leaned  over,  reaching 
out  for  his  audience  ;  he  pointed  into  their  souls  with  an 
insistent  finger.  His  voice  was  husky  from  much  speaking, 
but  the  great  auditorium  was  as  still  as  death,  and  every 
one  heard  him. 

And  then,  as  Jurgis  came  out  from  this  meeting,  some 
one  handed  him  a  paper  which  he  carried  home  with  him 
and  read ;  and  so  he  became  acquainted  with  the  “  Appeal 
to  Reason.”  About  twelve  years  previously  a  Colorado 
real-estate  speculator  had  made  up  his  mind  that  it  was 
wrong  to  gamble  in  the  necessities  of  life  of  human  beings ; 
and  so  he  had  retired  and  begun  the  publication  of  a 
Socialist  weekly.  There  had  come  a  time  when  he  had  to 
set  his  own  type,  but  he  had  held  on  and  won  out,  and  now 
his  publication  was  an  institution.  It  used  a  car-load  of 
paper  every  week,  and  the  mail-trains  would  be  hours 


THE  JUNGLE 


391 


ioading  up  at  the  depot  of  the  little  Kansas  town.  It  was  a 
four-page  weekly,  which  sold  for  less  than  half  a  cent  a 
copy ;  its  regular  subscription  list  was  a  quarter  of  a  mill¬ 
ion,  and  it  went  to  every  cross-roads  post-office  in  America. 

The  “Appeal”  was  a  “propaganda”  paper.  It  had  a 
manner  all  its  own,  —  it  was  full  of  ginger  and  spice,  of 
Western  slang  and  hustle.  It  collected  news  of  the  doings 
of  the  “  plutes,”  and  served  it  up  for  the  benefit  of  the 
“American  working-mule.”  It  would  have  columns  of 
the  deadly  parallel, —  the  million  dollars’ worth  of  diamonds, 
or  the  fancy  pet-poodle  establishment  of  a  society  dame, 
beside  the  fate  of  Mrs.  Murphy  of  San  Francisco,  who  had 
starved  to  death  on  the  streets,  or  of  John  Robinson,  just 
out  of  the  hospital,  who  had  hanged  himself  in  New  Yoik 
because  he  could  not  find  vvork.  It  collected  the  stories 
of  graft  and  misery  from  the  daily  press,  and  made  little 
pungent  paragraphs  out  of  them.  “  Three  banks  of  Bung- 
town,  South  Dakota,  failed,  and  more  savings  of  the 
workers  swallowed  up  I”  “The  mayor  of  Sandy  Creek, 
Oklahoma,  has  skipped  with  a  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
That’s  the  kind  of  rulers  the  old  partyites  give  you !  ” 
“  The  president  of  the  Florida  Flying  Machine  Company 
is  in  jail  for  bigamy.  He  was  a  prominent  opponent  of  So¬ 
cialism,  which  he  said  would  break  up  the  home !  ”  The 
“Appeal”  had  what  it  called  its  “Army,”  about  thirty 
thousand  of  the  faithful,  who  did  things  for  it ;  and  it  was 
always  exhorting  the  “Army”  to  keep  its  dander  up,  and 
occasionally  encouraging  it  with  a  prize  competition,  for 
anything  from  a  gold  watch  to  a  private  yacht  or  an  eighty- 
acre  farm.  Its  office  helpers  were  all  known  to  the  “Army” 
by  quaint  titles — “Inky  Ike,”  “the  Bald-headed  Man,” 
“  the  Red-headed  Girl,”  “  the  Bulldog,”  “  the  Office 
Goat,”  and  “the  One  Hoss.” 

But  sometimes,  again,  the  “Appeal”  would  be  desperately 
serious.  It  sent  a  correspondent  to  Colorado,  and  printed 
pages  describing  the  overthrow  of  American  institutions 
in  that  state.  In  a  certain  city  of  the  country  it  had  over 
forty  of  its  “Army”  in  the  headquarters  of  the  Telegraph 
Trust,  and  no  message  of  importance  to  Socialists  ever 


392 


THE  JUNGLE 


went  through  that  a  copy  of  it  did  not  go  to  the  “Appeal.” 
It  would  print  great  broadsides  during  the  eampaign ;  one 
copy  that  came  to  Jurgis  was  a  manifesto  addressed  to 
striking  working-men,  of  which  nearly  a  million  copies  had 
been  distributed  in  the  industrial  centres,  wherever  the 
employers’  associations  had  been  carrying  out  their  “  open 
shop”  program.  “You  have  lost  the  strike!”  it  was 
headed.  “And  now  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it?” 
It  was  what  is  called  an  “incendiary”  appeal,  —  it  was 
written  by  a  man  into  whose  soul  the  iron  had  entered. 
.When  this  edition  appeared,  tv/enty  thousand  copies  were 
sent  to  the  stockyards  district;  and  they  were  taken  out 
and  stowed  away  in  the  rear  of  a  little  cigar-store,  and 
every  evening,  and  on  Sundays,  the  members  of  the  Pack- 
ingtown  locals  would  get  armfuls  and  distribute  them  on 
the  streets  and  in  the  houses.  The  people  of  Packing- 
town  had  lost  their  strike,  if  ever  a  people  had,  and  so 
they  read  these  papers  gladly,  and  twenty  thousand  were 
hardly  enough  to  go  round.  Jurgis  had  resolved  not  to 
go  near  his  old  home  again,  but  when  he  heard  of  this  it 
was  too  much  for  him,  and  every  night  for  a  week  he 
would  get  on  the  car  and  ride  out  to  the  stockyards,  and 
help  to  undo  his  work  of  the  previous  year,  when  he  had 
sent  Mike  Scully’s  ten-pin  setter  to  the  city  Board  of 
Aldermen. 

It  was  quite  marvellous  to  see  what  a  difference  twelve 
months  had  made  in  Packingtown  —  the  eyes  of  the  people 
were  getting  opened !  The  Socialists  were  literally  sweep¬ 
ing  everything  before  them  that  election,  and  Scully  and 
the  Cook  County  machine  were  at  their  wits’  end  for  an 
“issue.”  At  the  very  close  of  the  campaign  they  be¬ 
thought  themselves  of  the  fact  that  the  strike  had  been 
broken  by  negroes,  and  so  they  sent  for  a  South  Carolina 
fire-eater,  the  “pitchfork  senator,”  as  he  was  called,  a 
man  who  took  off  his  coat  when  he  talked  to  working-men, 
and  damned  and  swore  like  a  Hessian.  This  meeting  they 
advertised  extensively,  and  the  Socialists  advertised  it  too 
—  with  the  result  that  about  a  thousand  of  them  were 
on  hand  that  evening.  The  “pitchfork  senator”  stood 


THE  JUHGLE 


393 


their  fusillade  of  questions  for  about  an  hour,  and  then 
went  home  in  disgust,  and  the  balance  of  the  meeting  was 
a  strictly  party  affair.  Jurgis,  who  had  insisted  upon  com¬ 
ing,  had  the  time  of  his  life  that  night ;  he  danced  about  and 
waved  his  arms  in  his  excitement — and  at  the  very  climax 
he  broke  loose  from  his  friends,  and  got  out  into  the  aisle, 
and  proceeded  to  make  a  speech  himself!  The  senator 
had  been  denying  that  the  Democratic  party  was  corrupt ; 
it  was  always  the  Republicans  who  bought  the  votes,  he 
said, — and  here  was  Jurgis  shouting  furiously,  “It’s  a  lie! 
It’s  a  lie!  ”  After  which  he  went  on  to  tell  them  how  he 
knew  it — that  he  knew  it  because  he  had  bought  them 
himself!  And  he  would  have  told  the  “pitchfork  senator” 
%.il  his  experiences,  had  not  Harry  Adams  and  a  friend 
grabbed  him  about  the  neck  and  shoved  him  into  a  seat. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 


One  of  the  first  things  that  Jurgis  had  done  after  he 
got  a  job  was  to  go  and  see  Marija.  She  came  down  into 
the  basement  of  the  house  to  meet  him,  and  he  stood  by 
the  door  with  his  hat  in  his  hand,  saying,  “  I’ve  got  work 
now,  and  so  you  can  leave  here.” 

But  Marija  only  shook  her  head.  There  was  nothing 
else  for  her  to  do,  she  said,  and  nobody  to  employ  her. 
She  could  not  keep  her  past  a  secret  —  girls  had  tried  it, 
and  they  were  always  found  out.  There  were  thousands 
of  men  who  came  to  this  place,  and  sooner  or  later  she 
would  meet  one  of  them.  “  And  besides,”  Marija  added, 
“  I  can’t  do  anything,  I’m  no  good  —  I  take  dope.  What 
could  you  do  with  me  ?  ” 

“  Can’t  you  stop  ?  ”  Jurgis  cried. 

“  No,”  she  answered,  “  I’ll  never  stop.  What’s  the  use 
of  talking  about  it  —  I’ll  stay  here  till  I  die,  I  guess.  It’s 
all  I’m  fit  for.”  And  that  was  all  that  he  could  get  her  to 
say  —  there  was  no  use  trying.  When  he  told  her  he 
would  not  let  Elzbieta  take  her  money,  she  answered  indif¬ 
ferently;  “  Then  it’ll  be  wasted  here  —  that’s  all.”  Her 
eyelids  looked  heavy  and  her  face  was  red  and  swollen ;  he 
saw  that  he  was  annoying  her,  that  she  only  wanted  him  to 
go  away.  So  he  went,  disappointed  and  sad. 

Poor  Jurgis  was  not  very  happy  in  his  home-life. 
Elzbieta  was  sick  a  good  deal  now,  and  the  boys  were  wild 
and  unruly,  and  very  much  the  worse  for  their  life  upon 
the  streets.  But  he  stuck  by  the  family  nevertheless,  for 
they  reminded  him  of  his  old  happiness ;  and  when  things 
went  wrong  he  could  solace  himself  with  a  plunge  into 
the  Socialist  movement.  Since  his  life  had  been  caught 

394 


THE  JUNGLE 


395 


up  into  the  current  of  this  great  stream,  things  which 
had  before  been  the  whole  of  life  to  him  came  to  seem  of 
relatively  slight  importance ;  his  interests  were  elsewhere, 
in  the  world  of  ideas.  His  ontwardJlfe  was  commonplace 
and  uninteresting ;  he  was  just  a  hotel-porter,  and  ex¬ 
pected  to  remain  one  while  he  lived;  but  meantime,  in 
the  realm  of  thought,  his  life  was  a  perpetual  adventure. 
There  was  so  much  to  know  —  so  many  wonders  to  be  dis¬ 
covered  I  Never  in  all  his  life  did  Jurgis  forget  the  day 
before  election,  when  there  came  a  telephone  message  from  a 
friend  of  Harry  Adams,  asking  him  to  bring  Jurgis  to  see 
him  that  night  ;  and  Jurgis  went,  and  met  one  of  the  minds 
of  the  movement. 

The  invitation  was  from  a  man  named  Fisher,  a  Chicago 
millionnaire  who  had  given  up  his  life  to  settlement-work, 
and  had  a  little  home  in  the  heart  of  the  city’s  slums.  He 
did  not  belong  to  the  party,  but  he  was  in  sympathy  with 
it ;  and  he  said  that  he  was  to  have  as  his  guest  that 
night  the  editor  of  a  big  Eastern  magazine,  who  wrote 
against  Socialism,  but  really  did  not  know  what  it  was. 
The  millionnaire  suggested  that  Adams  bring  Jurgis  along, 
and  then  start  up  the  subject  of  “^pure  food,’.’  in  which  the 
editor  was  interested.  ■* 

Young  Fisher’s  home  was  a  little  two-story  brick  house, 
dingy  and  weather-beaten  outside,  but  attractive  within. 
The  room  that  Jurgis  saw  was  half  lined  with  books,  and 
upon  the  walls  were  many  pictures,  dimly  visible  in  the 
soft,  yellow  light  ;  it  was  a  cold,  rainy  night,  so  a  log-fire 
was  crackling  in  the  open  hearth.  Seven  or  eight  people 
were  gathered  about  it  when  Adams  and  his  friend  arrived, 
and  Jurgis  saw  to  his  dismay  that  three  of  them  were 
ladies.  He  had  never  talked  to  people  of  this  sort  before, 
and  he  fell  into  an  agony  of  embarrassment.  He  stood  in 
the  doorway  clutching  his  hat  tightly  in  his  hands,  and 
made  a  deep  bow  to  each  of  the  persons  as  he  was  intro¬ 
duced  ;  then,  when  he  was  asked  to  have  a  seat,  he  took  a 
chair  in  a  dark  corner,  and  sat  down  upon  the  edge  of  it, 
and  wiped  the  perspiration  off  his  forehead  with  his  sleeve. 
He  was  terrified  lest  they  should  expect  him  to  talk. 


396 


THE  JUNGLE 


There  was  the  host  himself,  a  tall,  athletic  young  man, 
clad  in  evening  dress,  as  also  was  the  editor,  a  dyspeptic¬ 
looking  gentleman  named  Maynard.  There  was  the 
former’s  frail  young  wife,  and  also  an  elderly  lady,  who 
taught  kindergarten  in  the  settlement,  and  a  young  college 
student,  a  beautiful  girl  with  an  intense  and  earnest  face. 
She  only  spoke  once  or  twice  while  Jurgis  was  there  —  the 
rest  of  the  time  she  sat  by  the  table  in  the  centre  of  the 
room,  resting  her  chin  in  her  hands  and  drinking  in 
the  conversation.  There  were  two  other  men,  whom  young 
Fisher  had  introduced  to  Jurgis  as  Mr.  Lucas  and  Mr. 
Schliemann ;  he  heard  them  address  Adams  as  “  Comrade,” 
and  so  he  knew  that  they  were  Socialists. 

The  one  called  Lucas  was  a  mild  and  meek-looking  little 
gentleman  of  clerical  aspect;  he  had  been  an  itinerant 
evangelist,  it  transpired,  and  had  seen  the  light  and  be¬ 
come  a  prophet  of  the  new  dispensation.  He  travelled  all 
over  the  country,  living  like  the  apostles  of  old,  upon 
hospitality,  and  preaching  upon  street-corners  when  there 
was  no  hall.  The  other  man  had  been  in  the  midst  of  h 
discussion  with  the  editor  when  Adams  and  Jurgis  came 
in ;  and  at  the  suggestion  of  the  host  they  resumed  it  after 
the  interruption.  Jurgis  was  soon  sitting  spellbound, 
thinking  that  here  was  surely  the  strangest  man  that  had 
ever  lived  in  the  world. 

Nicholas  Schliemann  was  a  Swede,  a  tall,  gaunt  person, 
with  hairy  hands  and  bristling  yellow  beard;  he  was  a 
university  man,  and  had  been  a  professor  of  philosophy  — 
until,  as  he  said,  he  had  found  that  he  was  selling  his  char¬ 
acter  as  well  as  his  time.  Instead  he  had  come  to  America, 
where  he  lived  in  a  garret-room  in  this  slum  district,  and 
made  volcanic  energy  take  the  place  of  fire.  He  studied 
the  composition  of  food-stuffs,  and  knew  exactly  how  many 
proteids  and  carbohydrates  his  body  needed;  and  by 
scientific  chewing  he  said  that  he  tripled  the  value  of  all 
he  ate,  so  that  it  cost  him  eleven  cents  a  day.  About  the 
first  of  July  he  would  leave  Chicago  for  his  vacation,  on 
foot ;  and  when  he  struck  the  harvest-fields  he  would  set 
to  work  for  two  dollars  and  a  half  a  day,  and  come  home 


THE  J  [JHGLE 


397 


fhen  he  had  another  year’s  supply  —  a  hundred  and 
twenty-five  dollars.  That  was  the  nearest  approach  to  in¬ 
dependence  a  man  could  make  “  under  capitalism,”  he  ex¬ 
plained  ;  he  would  never  marry,  for  no  sane  man  would 
allow  himself  to  fall  in  love  until  after  the  revolution. 

He  sat  in  a  big  arm-chair,  with  his  legs  crossed,  and  his 
head  so  far  in  the  shadow  that  one  saw  only  two  glowing 
lights,  reflected  from  the  fire  on  the  hearth.  He  spoke 
simply,  and  utterly  without  emotion  ;  with  the  manner  of 
a  teacher  setting  forth  to  a  group  of  scholars  an  axiom  in 
geometry,  he  would  enunciate  such  propositions  as  made 
the  hair  of  an  ordinary  person  rise  on  end.  And  when  the 
auditor  had  asserted  his  non-comprehension,  he  would  pro¬ 
ceed  to  elucidate  by  some  new  proposition,  yet  more  appall¬ 
ing.  To  Jurgis  the  Herr  Dr.  Schliemann  assumed  the 
proportions  of  a  thunder-storm  or  an  earthquake.  And  yet, 
strange  as  it  might  seem,  there  was  a  subtle  bond  between 
them,  and  he  could  follow  the  argument  nearly  all  the 
time.  He  was  carried  over  the  difficult  places  in  spite  of 
himself;  and  he  went  plunging  away  in  mad  career  —  a 
very  IMazeppa-ride  upon  the  wild  horse  Speculation. 

Nicholas  Schliemann  was  familiar  with  all  the  universe, 
and  with  man  as  a  small  part  of  it.  He  understood  human 
institutions,  and  blew  them  about  like  soap-bubbles.  It 
was  surprising  that  so  much  destructiveness  could  be  con¬ 
tained  in  one  human  mind.  Was  it  government?  The 
purpose  of  government  was  the  guarding  of  property-rights, 
the  perpetuation  of  ancient  force  and  modern  fraud.  Or 
was  it  marriage  ?  Marriage  and  prostitution  were  two 
sides  of  one  shield,  the  predatory  man’s  exploitation  of  the 
sex-pleasure.  The  difference  between  them  was  a  differ¬ 
ence  of  class.  If  a  woman  had  money  she  might  dictate 
her  own  terms  ;  equality,  a  life-contract,  and  the  legitimacy 
—  that  is,  the  property-rights  —  of  her  children.  If  she  had 
no  money,  she  was  a  proletarian,  and  sold  herself  for  an 
existence.  And  then  the  subject  became  Religion,  which  was 
the  Arch-fiend’s  deadliest  weapon.  Government  oppressed 
the  body  of  the  wage-slave,  but  Religion  oppressed  hi: 
mind,  and  poisoned  the  stream  of  progress  at  its  source 


398 


THE  JUNGLE 


The  working-man  was  to  fix  his  hopes  upon  a  future  life, 
while  his  pockets  were  picked  in  this  one ;  he  was  brought 
up  to  frugality,  humility,  obedience,  —  in  short  to  all  the 
pseudo-virtues  of  capitalism.  The  destiny  of  civilization 
would  be  decided  in  one  final  death-struggle  between  the 
Red  International  and  the  Black,  between  Socialism  and 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church;  while  here  at  home,  “the 
stygian  midnight  of  American  evangelicalism  —  ” 

And  here  the  ex-preacher  entered  the  field,  and  there 
was  a  lively  tussle.  “  Comrade  ”  Lucas  was  not  what  is 
called  an  educated  man ;  he  knew  only  the  Bible,  but  it 
was  the  Bible  interpreted  by  real  experience.  And  what 
was  the  use,  he  asked,  of  confusing  Religion  with  men’s 
perversions  of  it?  That  the  church  was  in  the  hands  of 
the  merchants  at  the  moment  was  obvious  enough;  but 
already  there  were  signs  of  rebellion,  and  if  Comrade 
Schliemann  could  come  back  a  few  years  from  now  — 

“  Ah,  yes,”  said  the  other,  “  of  course.  I  have  no  doubt 
that  in  a  hundred  years  the  Vatican  will  be  denying  that 
it  ever  opposed  Socialism,  lust  as  at  present  it  denies  that 
it  ever  tortured  Galileo.” 

“I  am  not  defending  the  Vatican,”  exclaimed  Lucas, 
vehemently.  “  I  am  defending  the  word  of  God  —  which 
is  one  long  cry  of  the  human  spirit  for  deliverance  from 
the  sway  of  oppression.  Take  the  twenty-fourth  chapter 
of  the  Book  of  Job,  which  I  am  accustomed  to  quote  in  my 
addresses  as  ‘  the  Bible  upon  the  Beef  Trust  ’ ;  or  take  the 
words  of  Isaiah  —  or  of  the  Master  himself!  Not  the 
degant  prince  of  our  debauched  and  vicious  art,  not 
the  jewelled  idol  of  our  society  churches  —  but  the  Jesus 
of  the  awful  reality,  the  man  of  sorrow  and  pain,  the  out¬ 
cast,  despised  of  the  world,  who  had  no  where  to  lay  his 
head  —  ” 

“I  will  grant  you  Jesus,”  interrupted  the  other. 

“  Well,  then,”  cried  Lucas,  “  and  why  should  Jesus  have 
nothing  to  do  with  his  church  —  why  should  his  words  and 
his  life  be  of  no  authority  among  those  who  profess  to 
adore  him  ?  Here  is  a  man  who  was  the  world’s  first 
revolutionist,  the  true  founder  of  the  Socialist  movement  ? 


THF-  JDMGLE 


399 


a  man  whose  whole  being  was  one  flame  of  hatred  for 
wealth,  and  all  that  wealth  stands  for,  —  for  the  pride  of 
wealth,  and  the  luxury  of  wealth,  and  the  tyranny  of  wealth ; 
who  was  himself  a  beggar  and  a  tramp,  a  man  of  the  people, 
an  associate  of  saloon-keepers  and  women  of  the  town ; 
who  again  and  again,  in  the  most  explicit  language,  de¬ 
nounced  wealth  and  the  holding  of  wealth :  ‘  Lay  not  up 
for  youi-selves  treasures  on  earthl’  —  ‘Sell  that  ye  have 
and  give  alms  !  ’  —  ‘  Blessed  are  ye  poor,  for  yours  is  the 
kingdom  of  Heaven  I’  —  ‘Woe  unto  you  that  are  rich,  for 
ye  have  received  your  consolation  I  ’ —  ‘Verily,  I  say  unto 
you,  that  a  rich  man  shall  hardly  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  Heaven  I  ’  Who  denounced  in  unmeasured  terms  the 
exploiters  of  his  own  time:  ‘Woe  unto  j'^ou,  scribes  and 
pharisees,  hypocrites  I’  —  ‘Woe  unto  you  also,  you  law¬ 
yers  I’ —  ‘Ye  serpents,  ye  generation  of  vipers,  how  can 
ye  escape  the  damnation  of  hell  ?  ’  Who  drove  out  the 
business  men  and  brokers  from  the  temple  with  a  whip  I 
Who  was  crucified  —  think  of  it  —  for  an  incendiary  and 
a  disturber  of  the  social  order  I  And  this  man  they  have 
made  into  the  high-priest  of  property  and  smug  respecta¬ 
bility,  a  divine  sanction  of  all  the  horrors  and  abominations 
of  modern  commercial  civilization  1  Jewelled  images  are 
made  of  him,  sensual  priests  burn  incense  to  him,  and  mod¬ 
ern  pirates  of  industry  bring  their  dollars,  wrung  from  the 
toil  of  helpless  women  and  children,  and  build  temples  to 
him,  and  sit  in  cushioned  seats  and  listen  to  his  teachings 
expounded  by  doctors  of  dusty  divinity  —  ” 

“Bravo  I”  cried  Schliemann,  laughing.  But  the  other 
was  in  full  career — he  had  talked  this  subject  every  day 
for  five  years,  and  had  never  yet  let  himself  be  stopped 
“  This  Jesus  of  Nazareth  I  ”  he  cried.  “  This  class-con 
scious  working-man  I  This  union  carpenter  1  This  agitator, 
law-breaker,  firebrand,  anarchist  I  He,  the  sovereign  lord 
and  master  of  a  world  which  grinds  the  bodies  and  souls 
of  human  beings  into  dollars  —  if  he  could  come  into  the 
world  this  day  and  see  the  things  that  men  have  made  in 
his  name,  would  it  not  blast  his  soul  with  horror?  Would 
he  not  go  mad  at  the  sight  of  it,  he  the  Prince  of  Mercy 


40(i 


THE  JUNGLE 


and  Love !  That  dreadful  night  when  he  la,y  in  the  Garden 
of  Gethsemane  and  writhed  in  agony  until  he  sweat  blood 
-—do  you  think  that  he  saw  anything  worse  than  he  might 
see  to-night  upon  the  plains  of  Manchuria,  where  men 
march  out  with  a  jewelled  image  of  him  before  them,  to  do 
wholesale  murder  for  the  benefit  of  foul  monsters  of  sen¬ 
suality  and  cruelty  ?  Do  you  not  know  that  if  he  were  in 
St.  Petersburg  now,  he  would  take  the  whip  with  which 
he  drove  out  the  bankers  from  his  temple  —  ” 

Here  the  speaker  paused  an  instant  for  breath.  “No, 
comrade,”  said  the  other,  dryly,  “  for  he  was  a  practical 
man.  He  would  take  pretty  little  imitation-lemons,  such 
as  are  now  being  shipped  into  Russia,  handy  for  carrying 
in  the  pockets,  and  strong  enough  to  blow  a  whole  temple 
out  of  sight.” 

Lucas  waited  until  the  company  had  stopped  laughing 
over  this  ;  then  he  began  again :  “  But  look  at  it  from  the 
point  of  view  of  practical  politics,  comrade.  Here  is  an 
historical  figure  whom  all  men  reverence  and  love,  whom 
some  regard  as  divine ;  and  who  was  one  of  us  —  who  lived 
our  life,  and  taught  our  doctrine.  And  now  shall  we  leave 
him  in  the  hands  of  his  enemies — ■  shall  we  allow  them  to 
stifle  and  stultify  his  example  ?  We  have  his  words,  which 
no  one  can  deny;  and  shall  we  not  quote  them  to  the 
people,  and  prove  to  them  what  he  was,  and  what  he  taught, 
and  what  he  did?  No,  no, —-a  thousand  times  no!  —  we 
shall  use  his  authority  to  turn  out  the  knaves  and  slug¬ 
gards  from  his  ministry,  and  we  shall  yet  rouse  the  people 
to  action !  —  ” 

Lucas  halted  again;  and  the  other  stretched  out  his 
hand  to  a  paper  on  the  table.  “  Here,  comrade,”  he  said, 
with  a  laugh,  “  here  is  a  place  for  you  to  begin.  A  bishop 
whose  wife  has  just  been  robbed  of  fifty  thousand  dollars’ 
worth  of  diamonds !  And  a  most  unctuous  and  oily  of 
bishops  I  An  eminent  and  scholarly  bishop  I  A  philan¬ 
thropist  and  friend  of  labor  bishop — -a  Civic  Federation 
decoy-duck  for  the  chloroforming  of  the  wage-working¬ 
man  !  ” 

To  this  little  passage  of  arms  the  rest  of  the  company 


THE  JUNGLE 


401 


as  spectators.  But  now  Mr.  Maynard,  the  editor,  took  oc* 
frasion  to  remark,  somewhat  naively,  that  he  had  always 
understood  that  Socialists  had  a  cut-and-dried  programme 
for  the  future  of  civilization;  whereas  here  were  two  active 
members  of  the  party,  who,  from  what  he  could  make  out, 
were  agreed  about  nothing  at  all.  Would  the  two,  for  his 
enlightenment,  try  to  ascertain  just  what  they  had  in  com* 
mon,  and  why  they  belonged  to  the  same  party  ?  This 
resulted,  after  much  debating,  in  the  formulating  of  two 
carefully  worded  propositions:  First,  that  a  Socialist  be¬ 
lieves  in  the  common  ownership  and  democratic  manage¬ 
ment  of  the  means  of  producing  the  necessities  of  life ;  and, 
second,  that  a  socialist  believes  that  the  means  by  which 
this  is  to  be  brought  about  is  the  class-conscious  political 
organization  of  the  wage-earners.  Thus  far  they  were  at 
one ;  but  no  farther.  To  Lucas,  the  religious  zealot, 
the  cooperative  commonwealth  was  the  New  Jerusalem, 
the  kingdom  of  Heaven,  which  is  “  within  you.”  To  the 
^  other.  Socialism  was  simply  a  necessary  step  toward  a 
far-distant  goal,  a  step  to  be  tolerated  with  impatience. 
Schliemann  called  himself  a  “philosophic  anarchist”;  and 
he  explained  that  an  anarchist  was  one  who  believed  that 
the  end  of  human  existence  was  the  free  development  of 
every  personality,  unrestricted  by  laws  save  those  of  its 
own  being.  Since  the  same  kind  of  match  would  light 
every  one’s  fire  and  the  same-shaped  loaf  of  bread  would 
fill  every  one’s  stomach,  it  would  be  perfectly  feasible  to 
submit  industry  to  the  control  of  a  majority  vote.  There 
was  only  one  earth,  and  the  quantity  of  material  things 
was  limited.  Of  intellectual  and  moral  things,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  was  no  limit,  and  one  could  have  more 
without  another’s  having  less ;  hence  “  Communism  in 
material  production,  anarchism  in  intellectual,”  was  the 
formula  of  modern  proletarian  thought.  As  soon  as  the 
birth-agony  was  over,  and  the  wounds  of  society  had  been 
healed,  there  would  be  established  a  simple  system  whereby 
each  man  was  credited  with  his  labor  and  debited  with  his 
purchases ;  and  after  that  the  processes  of  production,  ex¬ 
change,  and  consumption  would  go  on  automatically,  and 

27 


402 


THE  JUNGLE 


without  our  being  conscious  of  them,  any  more  than  a  man 
is  conscious  of  the  beating  of  his  heart.  And  then,  explained 
Schliemann,  society  would  break  up  into  independent,  self- 
governing  communities  of  mutually  congenial  persons  j 
examples  of  which  at  present  were  clubs,  churches,  and  po¬ 
litical  parties.  After  the  revolution,  all  the  intellectual, 
artistic,  and  spiritual  activities  of  men  would  be  cared  for 
by  such  “  free  associations  ” ;  romantic  novelists  would  be 
supported  by  those  who  liked  to  read  romantic  novels,  and 
impressionist  painters  would  be  supported  by  those  who 
liked  to  look  at  impressionist  pictures  —  and  the  same  with 
preachers  and  scientists,  editors  and  actors  and  musicians. 
If  any  one  wanted  to  work  or  paint  or  pray,  and  could  find 
no  one  to  maintain  him,  he  could  support  himself  by  work¬ 
ing  part  of  the  time.  That  was  the  case  at  present,  the 
only  difference  being  that  the  competitive  wage-system 
compelled  a  man  to  work  all  the  time  to  live,  while,  after 
the  abolition  of  privilege  and  exploitation,  any  one  would 
be  able  to  support  himself  by  an  hour’s  work  a  day.  Also 
the  artist’s  audience  of  the  present  was  a  small  minority 
of  people,  all  debased  and  vulgarized  by  the  effort  it  had 
cost  them  to  win  in  the  commercial  battle ;  of  the  intellec¬ 
tual  and  artistic  activities  which  would  result  when  the 
whole  of  mankind  was  set  free  from  the  nightmare  of  com¬ 
petition,  we  could  at  present  form  no  conception  what 
ever. 

And  then  the  editor  wanted  to  know  upon  what  ground 
Dr.  Schliemann  asserted  that  it  might  be  possible  for  a  society 
to  exist  upon  an  hour’s  toil  by  each  of  its  members.  “Just 
what,”  answered  the  other,  “would  be  the  productive 
capacity  of  society  if  the  present  resources  of  science  were 
utilized,  we  have  no  means  of  ascertaining;  but  we  may  be 
sure  it  would  exceed  anything  that  would  sound  reasonable 
to  minds  inured  to  the  ferocious  barbarities  of  Capitalism. 
After  the  triumph  of  the  international  proletariat,  war 
would  of  course  be  inconceivable ;  and  who  can  figure  the 
cost  of  war  to  humanity  —  not  merely  the  value  of  the 
lives  and  the  material  that  it  destroys,  not  merely  the  cost 
of  keeping  millions  of  men  in  idleness,  of  arming  and 


J'HE  JUNGLE 


equipping  them  for  battle  and  parade,  but  the  drain 
upon  the  vital  energies  of  society  by  the  war-attitude  and 
the  war-terror,  the  brutality  and  ignorance,  the  drunken¬ 
ness,  prostitution,  and  crime  it  entails,  the  industrial  impo¬ 
tence  and  the  moral  deadness  ?  Do  you  think  that  it 
would  be  too  much  to  say  that  two  hours  of  the  working 
time  of  every  efficient  member  of  a  community  goes  to 
feed  the  red  fiend  of  war  ?  ” 

And  then  Sehliemann  went  on  to  outline  some  of  the 
wastes  of  competition :  the  losses  of  industrial  warfare  ; 
the  ceaseless  worry  and  friction ;  the  vices  —  such  as  drink, 
for  instance,  the  use  of  which  had  nearly  doubled  in  twenty 
years,  as  a  consequence  of  the  intensification  of  the  eco¬ 
nomic  struggle  ;  the  idle  and  unproductive  members  of  the 
community,  the  frivolous  rich  and  the  pauperized  poor ; 
the  law  and  the  whole  machinery  of  repression  ;  the  wastes 
of  social  ostentation,  the  milliners  and  tailors,  the  hair¬ 
dressers,  dancing  masters,  chefs  and  lackeys.  “  You  under¬ 
stand,”  he  said,  “  that  in  a  society  dominated  by  the  fact 
of  commercial  competition,  money  is  necessarily  the  test 
of  prowess,  and  wastefulness  the  sole  criterion  of  power. 
So  we  have,  at  the  present  moment,  a  society  with,  say, 
thirty  per  cent  of  the  population  occupied  in  producing 
useless  articles,  and  one  per  cent  occupied  in  destroying 
them.  And  this  is  not  all ;  for  the  servants  and  panders 
of  the  parasites  are  also  parasites,  the  milliners  and  the 
jewellers  and  the  lackeys  have  also  to  be  supported  by  the 
useful  members  of  the  community.  And  bear  in  mind 
also  that  this  monstrous  disease  affects  not  merely  the 
idlers  and  their  menials,  its  poison  penetrates  the  whole 
social  body.  Beneath  the  hundred  thousand  women  of 
the  elite  are  a  million  middle-class  women,  miserable 
because  they  are  not  of  the  ^lite,  and  trying  to  appear  of 
it  in  public;  and  beneath  them,  in  turn,  are  five  million 
farmers’  wives  reading  ‘  fashion  papers  ’  and  trimming 
bonnets,  and  shop-girls  and  serving-maids  selling  them¬ 
selves  into  brothels  for  cheap  jewellery  and  imitation  seal¬ 
skin  robes.  And  then  consider  that,  added  to  this 
competition  in  display,  you  have,  like  oil  on  the  flames,  a 


40i 


THE  JUiVGLE 


whole  system  of  competition  in  selling!  You  have  manu¬ 
facturers  contriving  tens  of  thousands  of  catchpenny 
devices,  storekeepers  displaying  them,  and  newspapers  and 
magazines  tilled  up  with  advertisements  of  them!” 

‘‘And  don’t  forget  the  wastes  of  fraud,”  put  in  young 
Fisher,  • 

“  When  one  comes  to  the  ultra-modern  profession  of 
advertising,”  responded  Schliemann, — “  the  science  of  per¬ 
suading  people  to  buy  wliat  they  do  not  want, — he  is  in 
the  very  centre  of  the  ghastly  charnel-house  of  capitalist 
destructiveness,  and  he  scarcely  knows  which  of  a  dozen 
horrors  to  point  out  first.  But  consider  the  waste  in  time 
and  energy  incidental  to  making  ten  thousand  varieties  of 
a  thing  for  purposes  of  ostentation  and  snobbishness,  where 
one  variety  would  do  for  use!  Consider  all  the  waste 
incidental  to  the  manufacture  of  cheap  qualities  of  goods, 
of  goods  made  to  sell  and  deceive  the  ignorant ;  consider 
the  wastes  of  adulteration, — the  shoddy  clothing,  the 
cotton  blankets,  the  unstable  tenements,  the  ground-cork 
life-preservers,  tlie  adulterated  milk,  the  analine  soda-water, 
the  potato-flour  sausages — ” 

“And  consider  the  moral  aspects  of  the  thing,”  put  in 
the  ex-preacher. 

“  Precisely,”  said  Schliemann;  “the  low  knavery  and  the 
ferocious  cruelty  incidental  to  them,  the  plotting  and  the 
lying  and  the  bribing,  the  blustering  and  bragging, 
the  screaming  egotism,  the  hurrying  and  worrying.  Of 
course,  imitation  and  adulteration  are  the  essence  of  com- 
peti‘"ion — they  are  but  another  form  of  the  phrase  ‘to  buy 
in  tne  cheapest  market  and  sell  in  the  dearest.’  A  govern¬ 
ment  oflicial  has  stated  that  the  nation  suffers  a  loss  of  a 
billion  and  a  quarter  dollars  a  year  through  adulterated 
foods;  which  means,  of  course,  not  only  materials  wasted 
that  might  have  been  useful  outside  of  the  human  stomach, 
but  doctors  and  nurses  for  people  who  would  otherwise 
have  been  well,  and  undertakers  for  the  whole  human  race 
ten  or  twenty  years  before  the  proper  time.  Then  again, 
consider  the  waste  of  time  and  energy  required  to  sell 
these  things  in  a  dozen  stores,  where  one  would  do.  There 


THE  JUNGLE 


406 


are  a  million  or  two  of  business  firms  in  the  country,  and 
five  or  ten  times  as  many  clerks ;  and  consider  the  hand¬ 
ling  and  rehandling,  the  accounting  and  reaccounting,  the 
planning  and  worrying,  the  balancing  of  petty  profit  and 
loss.  Consider  the  whole  machinery  of  the  civil  law  made 
necessary  by  these  processes ;  the  libraries  of  ponderous 
tomes,  the  courts  and  juries  to  interpret  them,  the  lawyers 
studying  to  circumvent  them,  the  pettifogging  and  chi¬ 
canery,  the  hatreds  and  lies  !  Consider  the  wastes 
incidental  to  the  blind  and  haphazard  production  of  com* 
modities,  —  the  factories  closed,  the  workers  idle,  the  goods 
spoiling  in  storage ;  consider  the  activities  of  the  stock- 
manipulator,  the  paralyzing  of  whole  industries,  the  over- 
stimulation  of  others,  for  speculative  purposes  ;  the  assign¬ 
ments  and  bank-failures,  the  crises  and  panics,  the  deserted 
towns  and  the  starving  populations !  Consider  the  ener¬ 
gies  wasted  in  the  seeking  of  markets,  the  sterile  trades, 
such  as  drummer,  solicitor,  bill-poster,  advertising  agent. 
Consider  the  wastes  incidental  to  the  crowding  into  cities, 
made  necessary  by  competition  and  by  monopoly  railroad- 
rates  ;  consider  the  slums,  the  bad  air,  the  disease  and  the 
waste  of  vital  energies ;  consider  the  office-buildings,  the 
waste  of  time  and  material  in  the  piling  of  story  upon  story, 
and  the  burrovnng  underground !  Then  take  the  whole 
business  of  insurance,  the  enormous  mass  of  administrative 
and  clerical  labor  it  involves,  and  all  utter  waste  —  ” 

“  I  do  not  follow  that,”  said  the  editor. 

“  The  Cooperative  Commonwealth  is  a  universal  auto¬ 
matic  insi’rance  compau}’^  and  savings-bank  for  all  its  mem¬ 
bers.  Capital  being  the  property  of  all,  injury  to  it  is 
shared  by  all  and  made  up  by  all.  The  bank  is  the  uni¬ 
versal  government  credit-account,  the  ledger  in  which 
every  individual’s  earnings  and  spendings  are  balanced 
There  is  also  a  universal  government  bulletin,  in  which  are 
listed  and  precisely  described  everything  which  the  com 
monwealth  has  for  sale.  As  no  one  makes  any  profit  by 
the  sale,  there  is  no  longer  any  stimulus  to  extravagance 
and  no  misrepresentation  ;  no  cheating,  no  adulteration  or 
imitation,  no  bribery  or  ‘  grafting.’  ” 


406 


THE  JUNGLE 


“  How  is  the  price  of  an  article  determined  ?  ” 

“  The  price  is  the  labor  it  has  cost  to  make  and  deliver 
it,  and  it  is  determined  by  the  first  principles  of  arithmetic. 
The  million  workers  in  the  nation’s  wheat-fields  have 
worked  a  hundred  days  each,  and  the  total  product  of  the 
labor  is  a  billion  bushels,  so  the  value  of  a  bushel  of  wheat 
is  the  tenth  part  of  a  farm  labor-day.  If  we  employ  an 
arbitrary  symbol,  and  pa}^,  say,  five  dollars  a  day  for  farm- 
work,  then  the  cost  of  a  bushel  of  wheat  is  fifty  cents.” 

“  You  say  ‘  for  farm-work,’  ”  said  Mr.  Maynard.  “  Then 
labor  is  not  to  be  paid  alike  ?  ” 

“  Manifestly  not,  since  some  work  is  easy  and  some  hard, 
and  we  should  have  millions  of  rural  mail-carriers,  and  no 
coal-miners.  Of  course  the  wages  may  be  left  the  same, 
and  the  hours  varied;  one  or  the  other  will  have  to  be 
varied  continually,  according  as  a  greater  or  less  number 
of  workers  is  needed  in  any  particular  industry.  That  is 
precisely  what  is  done  at  present,  except  that  the  transfer 
of  the  workers  is  accomplished  blindly  and  imperfectly,  by 
rumors  and  advertisements,  instead  of  instantly  and  com¬ 
pletely,  by  a  universal  government  bulletin.” 

>  “  How  about  those  occupations  in  which  time  is  difficult 

to  calculate  ?  What  is  the  labor  cost  of  a  book  ?  ” 

“  Obviously  it  is  the  labor  cost  of  the  paper,  printing,  and 
binding  of  it  —  about  a  fifth  of  its  present  cost.” 

“  And  the  author?  ” 

“  I  have  already  said  that  the  state  could  not  control  in, 
tellectual  production.  The  state  might  say  that  it  had 
taken  a  year  to  write  the  book,  and  the  author  might  say  it 
had  taken  thirty.  Goethe  said  that  every  hon  mot  of  his  had 
cost  a  purse  of  gold.  What  I  outline  here  is  a  national, 
or  rather  international,  system  for  the  providing  of  the 
material  needs  of  men.  Since  a  man  has  intellectual  needs 
also,  he  will  work  longer,  earn  more,  and  provide  for  them 
to  his  own  taste  and  in  his  own  way.  I  live  on  the  same 
earth  as  the  majority,  I  wear  the  same  kind  of  shoes  and 
sleep  in  the  same  kind  of  bed  ;  but  I  do  not  think  the  same 
kind  of  thoughts,  and  I  do  not  wish  to  pay  for  such  think¬ 
ers  as  the  majority  selects.  I  wish  such  things  to  be  left 


THE  JUNGLE 


407 


to  free  effort,  as  at  present.  If  people  want  to  listen  to  a 
certain  preacher,  they  get  together  and  contribute  what 
they  please,  and  pay  for  a  church  and  support  the  preacher, 
and  then  listen  to  him ;  I,  who  do  not  want  to  listen  to 
him,  stay  away,  and  it  costs  me  nothing.  In  the  same  way 
there  are  magazines  about  Egyptian  coins,  and  Catholic 
saints,  and  flying  machines,  and  athletic  records,  and  I 
know  nothing  about  any  of  them.  On  the  other  hand,  if 
wage-slavery  were  abolished,  and  I  could  earn  some  spare 
money  without  paying  tribute  to  an  exploiting  capitalist, 
then  there  would  be  a  magazine  for  the  purpose  of  inter¬ 
preting  and  popularizing  the  gospel  of  Friedrich  Nietzsche, 
the  prophet  of  Evolution,  and  also  of  Horace  Fletcher,  the 
inventor  of  the  noble  science  of  clean  eating;  and  inciden¬ 
tally,  perhaps,  for  the  discouraging  of  long  skirts,  and  the 
scientific  breeding  of  men  and  women,  and  the  establishing 
of  divorce  by  mutual  consent.” 

Dr.  Schliemann  paused  for  a  moment.  “  That  was  a 
lecture,”  he  said  with  a  laugh,  ‘‘and  yet  I  am  only 
begun  !  ” 

“  What  else  is  there?”  asked  Maynard. 

“  I  have  pointed  out  some  of  tlie  negative  wastes  of 
competition,”  answered  the  other.  “  I  have  hardly  men¬ 
tioned  the  positive  economies  of  cooperation.  Allowing 
five  to  a  family,  there  are  fifteen  million  families  in  this 
country;  and  at  least  ten  million  of  these  live  separately, 
the  domestic  drudge  being  either  the  wife  or  a  wage-slave. 
Now  set  aside  the  modern  system  of  pneumatic  house-clean¬ 
ing,  and  the  economies  of  cooperative  cooking ;  and  con¬ 
sider  one  single  item,  the  washing  of  dishes.  Surely  it  is 
moderate  to  say  that  the  dish-washing  for  a  family  of  five 
takes  half  an  hour  a  day ;  with  ten  hours  as  a  day’s  work, 
it  takes,  therefoi-e,  half  a  million  able-bodied  persons  — 
mostly  women  —  to  do  the  dish-washing  of  the  country. 
And  note  that  this  is  most  filthy  and  deadening  and  brutal¬ 
izing  work ;  that  it  is  a  cause  of  anaemia,  nervousness, 
ugliness,  and  ill-temper;  of  prostitution,  suicide,  and  insan¬ 
ity;  of  drunken  husbands  and  degenerate  children  —  for 
all  of  which  things  the  community  has  natuially  to  pay^ 


t08 


THE  JUNGLE 


And  now  consider  that  in  each  of  my  little  free  commu’ 
lities  there  would  be  a  machine  which  would  wash  and  dry 
vhe  dishes,  and  do  it,  not  merely  to  the  eye  and  the  touch, 
uut  scientifically  —  sterilizing  them  —  and  do  it  at  a  saving 
of  all  of  the  drudgery  and  nine-tenths  of  the  time  I  All  of 
these  things  you  may  find  in  the  books  of  Mrs.  Gilman; 
and  then  take  Kropotkin’s  ‘  Fields,  Factories,  and  Work¬ 
shops,’  and  read  about  the  new  science  of  agriculture,  which 
has  been  built  up  in  the  last  ten  years ;  by  which,  with 
made  soils  and  intensive  culture,  a  gardener  can  raise  ten 
or  twelve  crops  in  a  season,  and  two  hundred  tons  of  vege¬ 
tables  upon  a  single  acre ;  by  which  the  population  of  the 
whole  globe  could  be  supported  on  the  soil  now  cultivated 
in  the  United  States  alone  I  It  is  impossible  to  apply  such 
methods  now,  owing  to  the  ignorance  and  poverty  of  our 
scattered  farming  population ;  but  imagine  the  problem  of 
providing  the  food  supply  of  our  nation  once  taken  in  hand 
systematically  and  rationally,  by  scientists  I  All  the  poor 
and  rocky  land  set  apart  for  a  national  timber-reserve,  in 
which  our  children  play,  and  our  young  men  hunt,  and  our 
poets  dwell  I  The  most  favorable  climate  and  soil  for  each 
product  selected ;  the  exact  requirements  of  the  commu¬ 
nity  known,  and  the  acreage  figured  accordingly ;  the  most 
improved  machinery  employed,  under  the  direction  of  ex¬ 
pert  agricultural  chemists  I  I  was  brought  up  on  a  farm, 
and  I  know  the  awful  deadliness  of  farm-work ;  and  I  like 
to  picture  it  all  as  it  will  be  after  the  revolution.  To  pic¬ 
ture  the  great  potato-planting  machine,  drawn  by  four 
horses,  or  an  electric  motor,  ploughing  the  furrow,  cutting 
and  dropping  and  covering  the  potatoes,  and  planting  a 
score  of  acres  a  day  I  To  picture  the  great  potato-digging 
machine,  run  by  electricity,  perhaps,  and  moving  across  a 
thousand-acre  field,  scooping  up  earth  and  potatoes,  and 
dropping  the  latter  into  sacks  1  To  see  every  other  kind 
of  vegetable  and  fruit  handled  in  the  same  way  —  apples 
and  oranges  picked  by  machinery,  cows  milked  by  electric¬ 
ity  —  things  which  are  already  done,  as  you  may  know. 
To  picture  the  harvest-fields  of  the  future,  to  which  mill¬ 
ions  of  happy  men  and  women  come  for  a  summer  holidayt 


THE  JUNGLE 


409 


brought  by  special  trains,  the  exactly  needful  number  to 
each  place !  And  to  contrast  all  this  with  our  present 
agonizing  system  of  independent  small  farming, — a  stunted, 
haggard,  ignorant  man,  mated  with  a  yellow,  lean,  and  sad¬ 
eyed  drudge,  and  toiling  from  four  o’clock  in  the  morning 
until  nine  at  night,  working  the  children  as  soon  as  thej 
are  able  to  walk,  scratching  the  soil  with  its  primitive 
tools,  and  shut  out  from  all  knowledge  and  hope,  from  all 
the  benefits  of  science  and  invention,  and  all  the  joys  of 
the  spirit — held  to  a  bare  existence  by  competition  in  ^ 
labor,  and  boasting  of  his  freedom  because  he  is  too  blind 
to  see  his  chains !  ’ 

Dr  Schliemann  paused  a  moment,  “And  then,”  he 
continued,  “  place  beside  this  fact  of  an  unlimited  food  sup¬ 
ply,  the  newest  discovery  ot  physiologists,  that  most  of  the 
ills  of  the  human  system  are  due  to  overfeeding!  And 
then  again,  it  has  been  proven  that  meat  is  unnecessary  as 
a  food;  and  meat  is  obviously  more  difficult  to  produce 
than  vegetable  food,  less  pleasant  to  prepare  and liandle, 
and  more  likely  to  be  unclean.  But  what  of  that,  so  long 
as  it  tickles  the  palate  more  strongly  ?  ” 

“  How  would  Socialism  change  that  ?  ”  asked  the  girl- 
student,  quickly.  It  was  the  first  time  she  had  spoken. 

“  So  long  as  we  have  wage  slavery,”  answered  Schlie-  .-5\ 
mann,  “it  matters  not  in  the  least  ho  v  debasing  and  repul-  t* 
sive  a  task  may  be,  it  is  easy  to  find  people  to  perform  it. 
But  just  as  soon  as  labor  is  set  free,  then  the  price  of  such  Jj 
work  will  begin  to  rise.  So  one  by  one  the  old,  dingy,  and 
unsanitary  factories  will  come  down — it  will  be  cheaper 
to  build  new;  and  so  tbe  steamships  will  be  provided  with 
stoking-machinery,  and  so  the  dangerous  trades  will  be 
made  safe,  or  substitutes  will  be  found  for  their  products. 

In  exactly  the  same  way,  as  the  citizens  of  our  Industrial 
Republic  become  refined,  year  by  year  the  cost  of  slaughter¬ 
house  produets  will  increase;  until  eventually  those  who 
want  to  eat  meat  will  have  to  do  their  own  killing — and 
how  long  do  you  think  the  custom  would  survive  then? 

— To  go  on  to  another  item — one  of  the  necessary  accom- 
naniments  of  capitalism  in  a  democracy  is  political  cor- 


410 


THE  JUNGLE 


ruption ;  anid  one  of  the  consequences  of  civic  administra 
tion  by  ignorant  and  vicious  politicians,  is  that  preventable 
diseases  kill  off  half  our  population.  And  even  if  science 
were  allowed  to  try,  it  could  do  little,  because  the  majority 
of  human  beings  are  not  yet  human  beings  at  all,  but  simpl}>- 
machines  for  the  creating  of  wealth  for  others.  They  are 
penned  up  in  filthy  houses  and  left  to  rot  and  stew  in 
misery,  and  the  conditions  of  their  life  make  them  ill  faster 
than  all  the  doctors  in  the  world  could  heal  them ;  and  so, 
of  course,  they  remain  as  centres  of  contagion,  poisoning 
the  lives  of  all  of  us,  and  making  happiness  impossible  for 
even  the  most  selfish.  For  this  reason  I  would  seriously 
maintain  that  all  the  medical  and  surgical  discoveries  that 
science  can  make  in  the  future  will  be  of  less  importance 
than  the  application  of  the  knowledge  we  already  possess, 
when  the  disinherited  of  the  earth  have  established  their 
right  to  a  human  existence.” 

And  here  the  Herr  Doctor  relapsed  into  silence  again. 
Jurgis  had  noticed  that  the  beautiful  young  girl  who  sat 
by  the  centre-table  was  listening  with  something  of  the 
same  look  that  he  himself  had  worn,  the  time  when  he  had 
first  discovered  Socialism.  Jurgis  would  have  liked  to  talk 
to  her,  he  felt  sure  that  she  would  have  understood  him. 
Later  on  in  the  evening,  when  the  group  broke  up,  he 
heard  Mrs.  Fisher  say  to  her,  in  a  low  voice,  “  I  wonder  if 
Mr.  Maynard  will  still  write  the  same  things  about  Social¬ 
ism  ;  ”  to  which  she  answered,  “  I  don’t  know  —  but  if  he 
does  we  shall  know  that  he  is  a  knave  !  ” 

****** 

And  only  a  few  hours  after  this  came  election  day — when 
the  long  campaign  was  over,  and  the  whole  country  seemed 
to  stand  still  and  hold  its  breath,  awaiting  the  issue.  Jur¬ 
gis  and  the  rest  of  the  staff  of  Hinds’s  Hotel  could  hardly 
stop  to  finish  their  dinner,  before  they  hurried  off  to  the 
big  hall  which  the  party  had  hired  for  that  evening. 

But  already  there  were  people  waiting,  and  already  the 
telegraph  instrum.ent  on  the  stage  had  begun  clicking  off 


THE  JUNGLE 


411 


the  returns^.  When  the  final  accounts  were  made  up,  the 
Socialist  vote  proved  to  be  over  four  hundred  thousand — 
an  increase  of  something  like  three  hundred  and  fifty  per 
cent  in  four  years.  And  that  was  doing  well;  but  the  party 
was  dependent  for  its  early  returns  upon  messages  from 
the  locals,  and  naturally  those  locals  which  had  been  most 
successful  were  the  ones  which  felt  most  like  reporting; 
and  so  that  night  every  one  in  the  hall  believed  that  the 
vote  was  going  to  be  six,  or  seven,  or  even  eight  hundred 
thousand.  Just  such  an  incredible  increase  had  actually 
been  made  in  Chicago,  and  in  the  state ;  the  vote  of  the 
city  had  been  6700  in  1900,  and  now  it  was  47,000;  that 
of  Illinois  had  been  9600,  and  now  it  was  69,000  !  So,  as 
the  evening  waxed,  and  the  crowd  piled  in,  the  meeting 
was  a  sight  to  be  seen.  Bul’-etins  would  be  read,  and  the 
people  would  shout  themselves  hoarse  ;  and  then  some  one 
would  make  a  speech,  and  there  would  be  more  shouting  ; 
and  then  a  brief  silence,  and  more  bulletins.  There  would 
come  messages  from  the  secretaries  of  neighboring  states, 
reporting  their  achievements;  the  vote  of  Indiana  had  gone 
from  2300  to  12,000;  of  Wisconsin  from  7000  to  28,000;  of 
Ohio  from  4800  to  36,000 !  There  were  telegrams  to  the 
national  office  from  enthusiastic  individuals  in  little  towns 
which  had  made  amazing  and  unprecedented  increases  in  a 
single  year :  Benedict,  Kansas,  from  26  to  260 ;  Hender¬ 
son,  Kentucky,  from  19  to  111 ;  Holland,  Michigan,  from 
14  to  208  ;  Cleo,  Oklahoma,  from  0  to  104  ;  Martin’s 
Ferry,  Ohio,  from  0  to  296  —  and  many  more  of  the 
same  kind.  There  were  literally  hundreds  of  such  towns ; 
there  would  be  reports  from  half  a  dozen  of  them  in  a 
single  batch  of  telegrams.  And  the  men  who  read  the 
despatches  off  to  the  audience  were  old  campaigners,  who 
had  been  to  the  places  and  helped  to  make  the  vote,  and 
could  make  appropriate  comments :  Quincy,  Illinois,  from 
189  to  831  —  that  was  where  the  mayor  had  arrested  a 
Socialist  speaker  I  Crawford  County,  Kansas,  from  285  to 
1975,  that  was  the  home  of  the  “Appeal  to  Reason”! 
Battle  Creek,  Michigan,  from  4261  to  10,184;  that  was  the 
answer  of  labor  to  the  Citizens’  Alliance  Movement ! 


412 


THE  JUNGLE 


And  then  there  were  official  returns  from  the  various 
precincts  and  wards  of  the  city  itself!  Whether  it  was  a 
factory  district  or  one  of  the  “  silk-stocking  ”  wards  seemed 
to  make  no  particular  difference  in  the  increase ;  but  one 
of  the  things  which  surprised  the  party  leaders  most  was 
the  tremendous  vote  that  came  rolling  in  from  the  stock- 
yards.  Packingtown  comprised  three  wards  of  the  city, 
and  the  vote  in  the  spring  of  1903  had  been  five  hundred, 
and  in  the  fall  of  the  same  year,  sixteen  hundred.  Now, 
only  a  year  later,  it  was  over  sixty-three  hundred  —  and 
the  Democratic  vote  only  eighty-eight  hundred  I  There 
were  other  wards  in  which  the  Democratic  vote  had  been 
actually  surpassed,  and  in  two  districts,  members  of  the 
state  legislature  had  been  elected.  Thus  Chicago  now  led 
the  country;  it  had  set  a  new  standard  for  the  party,  it 
had  shown  the  working-men  the  way  I 

—  So  spoke  an  orator  upon  the  platform  ;  and  two  thou¬ 
sand  pairs  of  eyes  were  fixed  upon  him,  and  two  thousand 
voices  were  cheering  his  every  sentence.  The  orator  had 
been  the  head  of  the  city’s  relief  bureau  in  the  stockyards, 
until  the  sight  of  misery  and  corruption  had  made  him 
sick.  He  was  young,  hungry-looking,  full  of  fire ;  and  as 
he  swung  his  long  arms  and  beat  up  the  crowd,  to  Jurgis 
he  seemed  the  very  spirit  of  the  revolution.  “  Organize  I 
Organize!  Organize!” — that  was  his  cry.  He  was  afraid 
of  this  tremendous  vote,  which  his  party  had  not  expected, 
and  which  it  had  not  earned.  “These  men  are  not  So¬ 
cialists  !  ”  he  cried.  “  This  election  will  pass,  and  the  ex¬ 
citement  will  die,  and  people  will  forget  about  it;  and  if 
you  forget  about  it,  too,  if  you  sink  back  and  rest  upon 
your  oars,  we  shall  lose  this  vote  that  we  have  polled  to¬ 
day,  and  our  enemies  will  laugh  us  to  scorn  !  It  rests  with 
you  to  take  your  resolution  —  now,  in  the  flush  of  ^fictory, 
to  find  these  men  who  have  voted  for  us,  and  bring  them 
to  our  meetings,  and  organize  them  and  bind  them  to  us ! 
We  shall  not  find  all  our  campaigns  as  easy  as  this  one. 
Everywhere  in  the  country  to-night  the  old  party  politi¬ 
cians  are  studying  this  vote,  and  setting  their  sails  by  it ; 
and  nowhere  will  they  be  quicker  or  more  cunning  than 


THE  JUNGLE 


41S 


here  in  oui  own  city.  Fifty  thousand  Socialist  votes  in 
Chicago  means  a  municipal-ownership  Democracy  in 
the  spring  !  And  then  they  will  fool  the  voters  once  more, 
and  all  the  powers  of  plunder  and  corruption  will  be  swept 
into  office  again!  But  whatever  they  may  do  when  they 
get  in,  there  is  one  thing  they  will  not  do,  and  that  will 
be  the  thing  for  which  they  were  elected !  They  will  not 
give  the  people  of  our  city  municipal  ownership  —  they 
will  not  mean  to  do  it,  they  will  not  try  to  do  it;  all  that 
they  will  do  is  give  our  party  in  Chicago  the  greatest 
opportunity  that  has  ever  come  to  Socialism  in  America! 
We  shall  have  the  sham  reformers  self-stultified  and  self- 
convicted  ;  we  shall  have  the  radical  Democracy  left  with¬ 
out  a  lie  with  which  to  cover  its  nakedness!  And.  then 
will  begin  the  rush  that  will  never  be  checked,  the  tide 
I  that  will  never  turn  till  it  has  reached  its  flood  —  that  will 
be  irresistible,  overwhelming  —  the  rallying  of  the  out¬ 
raged  working-men  of  Chicago  to  our  standard !  And  we 
shall  organize  them,  we  shall  drill  them,  we  shall  marshal 
them  for  the  victory !  We  shall  bear  down  the  opposition, 
we  shall  sweep  it  before  us  —  and  Chicago  will  be  ours 
Chicago  will  be  ours !  CHICAGO  WILL  BE  OURSl” 


THE  ENI> 


OIL! 

A  NOVEL 

By  UPTON  SINCLAIR 


SINCLAIR’S  first  full-length  novel  in  eight  years;  a 
picture  of  the  oil  industry,  beginning  in  Southern 
California,  and  taking  in  the  world-struggle. 

A  complex  pattern  of  present-day  life,  into  which 
are  woven  oil  magnates  and  labor  leaders,  financiers 
and  Soviet  agents,  “holy  rollers”  and  Socialist  agita¬ 
tors,  moving  picture  stars  and  producers,  flappers  and 
grandmothers  of  flappers;  a  swiftly  moving  panorama 
of  business  and  politics,  jazz  dancing  and  evangelism, 
love  and  war,  diplomatic  intrigue,  strikes,  jails,  and 
revolutionary  martyrdom. 

Floyd  Dell  writes:  “I  can  hardly  tear  myself  away 
from  it.  Tremendously  absorbing.  It  can’t  help  mak¬ 
ing  an  impression  on  America.  I  love  the  book  for 
all  the  richness  of  life  that  has  gone  into  it,  the  im¬ 
mense  range  of  its  interest,  the  eagle-swooping  vistas 
of  American  life;  for  the  new  tolerance  it  displays,  for 
its  tremendous  story-telling  capacity,  its  Tolstoyan 
ease  in  grasping  a  huge  theme.  A  splendid  novel 
.  .  .  truly  epic.”  ^  ^ 

Translations  und^  way  in  Russia,  France,  Ger¬ 
many,  Holland,  Swe  den,  Czecho-slovakia  and  Japan. 

One  of  the  longest  novels  ever  published  in  Amer¬ 
ica,  “OIL!”  might  have  been  made  into  three  volumes 
and  sold  for  $7.50. 

Price,  Cloth  Bound,  $2.50 
UPTON  SINCLAIR  -  Pasadena,  Calif. 


A  New  Novel  by  Upton  Sinclair 

100% 

THE  STORY  OF  A  PATRIOT 

W/  OULD  you  like  to  g'o  behind  the  scenes  and  see  tlie 
^  “mvisible  government”  of  your  countiy  saving  you  from 
the  Bolsheviks  and  the  Reds?  Would  you  like  to  meet  the 
secret  agents  and  provocateurs  of  “Big  Business,”  to  know 
what  they  look  like,  how  tliey  talk  and  what  they  are  doing 
to  make  the  world  safe  for  democracy?  Several  of  these 
gentlemen  have  been  haunting  the  home  of  Upton  Sinclair 
during  the  past  three  years  and  he  has  had  the  idea  of  turn¬ 
ing  the  tables  and  investigating  the  investigators.  He  has  put 
one  of  them,  Peter  Gudge  by  name,  into  a  book,  together  with 
Peter’s  ladyloves,  and  his  wife,  and  his  boss  and  a  whole 
group  of  his  fellow-agents  and  their  employers. 

The  hero  of  this  book  is  a  red-blooded,  100%  American, 
a  “he-man”  and  no  mollycoddle.  He  begins  with  the  Mooney 
case,  and  goes  through  half  a  dozen  big  cases  of  which  you 
have  heard.  His  story  is  a  fact-stoiy  of  America  from  1916 
to  1920,  and  will  make  a  bigger  sensation  than  “The  Jungle.” 
Albert  Rhys  Williams,  author  of  “Lenin”  and  “In  the  Claws 
of  the  German  Eagle,”  read  the  MS.  and  wrote: 

“This  is  the  first  novel  of  yours  that  T  have  read  through 
with  real  interest.  It  is  your  most  timely  work,  and  is  bound  to 
make  a  sensation.  I  venture  that  you  will  have  even  more  trouble 
than  you  had  with  ‘The  Brass  Check’ — in  getting  the  books 
minted  fast  enough.” 


Single  copy,  paper,  $1.00  postpaid. 
Single  copy,  cloth,  $1.50  postpaid. 


UPTON  SINCLAIR,  Pasadena,  California 


A  book  which  has  been  absolutely  boycotted  by  the  literary 
reviews  of  America. 

THE  PROFITS 
OF  RELIGION 

By  Upton  Sinclair 

A  STUDY  of  Supernaturalism  as  a  Source  of  Income  and  a 
Shield  to  Privilege;  the  first  examination  in  any  language 
of  institutionalized  religion  from  the  economic  point  of 
view.  “Has  the  labour  as  well  as  the  merit  of  breaking  virgin 
soil,”  writes  Joseph  McCabe.  The  book  has  had  practically  no 
advertising  and  only  two  or  three  reviews  in  radical  publications ; 
yet  forty  thousand  copies  have  been  sold  in  the  first  year. 

From  the  Rev.  John  Haynes  Holmes:  “I  must  confess  that  it  has  fairly 
made  me  writhe  to  read  these  pages,  not  because  they  are  untrue  or  un¬ 
fair,  but  on  the  contrary,  because  I  know  them  to  be  the  real  facts.  I 
love  the  church  as  I  love  my  home,  and  therefore  it  is  no  pleasant  expe¬ 
rience  to  be  made  to  face  such  a  story  as  this  which  you  have  told.  It 
had  to  be  done,  however,  and  I  am  glad  you  have  done  it,  for  my  interest 
in  the  church,  after  all,  is  more  or  less  incidental,  whereas  my  interest  in 
religion  is  a  fundamental  thing.  .  .  .  Let  me  repeat  again  that  I  feel 

that  you  have  done  us  all  a  service  in  the  writing  of  this  book.  Our 
Churches  today,  like  those  of  ancient  Palestine,  are  the  abode  of  Pharisees 
and  scribes.  It  is  as  spiritual  and  helpful  a  thing  now  as  it  was  in 
Jesus’  day  for  that  fact  to  be  revealed.” 

From  Luther  Burbank :  “No  one  has  ever  told  ‘the  truth,  the  whole 
truth,  and  nothing  but  the  truth’  more  faithfully  than  Upton  Sinclair  in 
‘The  Profits  of  Religion.’  ” 

From  Louis  Untermeyer :  “Let  me  add  my  quavering  alto  to  the  chorus 
of  applause  of  ‘The  Profits  of  Religion.’  It  is  something  more  than  a 
book — it  is  a  Work!” 

Single  copy,  paper,  $1.00  postpaid. 

Single  copy,  cloth,  $1.50  postpaid. 


UPTON  SINCLAIR  -  Pasadena,  California 


